IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 ^^ tii 11.1 l.-^KS — 6" ScMices Carporation m 37 <^ 'f'%' V ri wnST MAIN STRHT WIUTIR,N.Y. MSM (71«) 173-4503 CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHIVI/ICIVIH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microraproductions / Institut Canadian de microraproductions historiquas Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes tochniquas at bibiiographiquaa Tha G toth< Tha Instituta has attamptad to obtain tha bast original copy availabia for filming. Faaturas of this copy which may ba bibiiographically uniqua, which may altar any of tha imagas in tha raproduction, or which may significantly changa tha usual mathod of filming, ara chackad balow. 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Additional comments:/ Commentairas supplAmentaires: L'Institut a microfilm^ la meilleur exemplaira qu'il lui a AtA possible de se procurer. Les details de cet exemplaira qui sent paut-Atre uniquaa du point da vue blbiiographiqua, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une modification dans la mAthode normale de filmaga sont indiqute ci-dessous. n n n n n Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur Pages damaged/ Pages endommagtes Pages reatorad and/or laminated/ Pag^s restaurtes et/ou peiliculAea Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages dteolcrtes, tachatAes ou piquAes Pages detached/ Pages d6tach testant Alliance. "That it is well done we need hardly say. a book." — British Quarterly. We welcome such OLD TESTAMENT PORTRAITS. irations. Small Quarto. 7s. 6d. With Fifty Illus- " I'resents, in a readable form, a great amount of Biblical learning."— Scotaman. "Graphic, interesting, and full of instruction." — Glasgow Herald. ENTERING ON LIFEj a Book for Young Men. Seventh Edition. " Few better things have ever been written on their respective subjects than the two chapters on Christianity and Helps. We earnestly recommend men of thought, and especially young men, to read what has been to ourselves a truly delightful work."— Dean Alford. THE GREAT AND PRECIOUS PROMISES; Light from Beyond, l^hird Edition. OR. " Rich and poetical ; the thought earnest, strong, and practical the love deeply spiritual." — Leeds Keroury. "Calculated to afford much comfort." — Scotsman! "Beautiful and sweet.''— Rev. Paxton Hood. STRAHAN & COMPANY, LIMITED, 34, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. th uo 3k OuaXJKI I . THE BACKWOODS OF CANADA BY CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D, % u X H y. b: <. c a: fourth (fiition. My Native Land, Good-night I STRAHAN & COMPANY, LIMITED, 34, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 1879. / FCiO(>7.3 n79 This book, originally published as "Life in the Woods ; a Trae Story of the Canadian Bush," has been re-named in this edition, to remove indefiniteness as to its character and object. It was written after a lengthened stay in Canada, and may be thoroughly relied upon either by intending ^ants, or by others who wish to know about Bush x^uc in the Dominion. The narrative is that of a family, not my own, nor am I intended where the first personal pronoun is used. But I can vouch for every detail as literally correct. \ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Boy-dreams about travelling — Our family determines to go to Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Our passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship — The fishing-grounds — See whales and ice-bergs — Porpoises — Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — The great Gulf of St Law- rence— Thick ice-fogs — See land at last — Sailing up the river — Land at Quebec pp. i — 17 CHAPTER H. Quebec — Wolfe — Montcalm's skull — Toronto — We set off for the bush — Mud-roads — A rough ride — Our log-house — How it was built— Our bam— We get oxen and cows — Elephant and Buckeye — Unpacking our stores — What some of our neigh- bours brought when they came— Hot days— Bush costumes — Sun-strokes— My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part of the house- work pp. 18 — 39 CHAPTER in. Clearing the land — David's bragging, and the end of it— Burning the log-heaps — Our logging bee — What prejudice can do~ Our fences and crops nearly burned — The woods on fire — Building a snake-fence — * Shingle * pigs give us sore trouble — •Breachy* horses and cattle PP' 40— 55 VI Contents, CHAPTER IV. Wc begin our preparations for sowing— Gadflies— Mosquitoes — Harrowing experiences — A huge fly — Sandflies — The poison of insects and serpents— Winter whtat— Tlic wonders of plant-life— Our first 'sport'— Woodpeckers—* Chitmunks* —The blue jay— The blue bird— The flight of birds pp. 56-72 CHAPTER V. Some family changes— Amusements — Cow-hunting— Our * side- line'— The bush — Adventures with rattlesnakes — Garter- snakes— A nog's flight for life— Black squirrels . pp. 73—86 CHAPTER VI. Spearing' fish — Ancient British canoes — Indian ones — A bargain with an Indian — Henry's cold bath — Canadian thunder- storms— Poor Yorick's death — Our glorious autumns— The change of the leaf— Sunsets — Indian summer — The fall rains and the roads — The first snow — Canadian cold — A winter landscape — 'Ice-storms' — Snow crystals — The minute per- fection of God's works — Deer-shooting — David's misfortune — Useless cnielty — Shedding of the stag's horns pp. 87 — 124 CHAPTER VII. Wolves — My adventure with a bear — Courtenay's cow and the wolves — A fright in the woods by night — The river freezes — Our winter fires — Cold, cold, cold ! — A winter's journey- Sleighing — Winter mufilings — Accidents through intense cold pp. 125—139 Contents, vn CHAPTER VIII. The aurora borcalis-' Jumpers' -Squaring iimI)cr-Rafts- Carr.ping out~A public niecti.ig-Winter fashions-.My toe frozen- A long winter's walk-Hospitality— Xcarly lost in '^^ "°°^^ pp. I40-I5S CHAPTER IX. Involuntary racing— A backvocds parsonage -Graves in the wilderness — Notions of equality — Arctic winters — Ruffol grouse-Indian fishing in winter— A marriage-Our wint r's pork pp. 156—167 CHAPTER X. Our neighbours-Insect plagues-Military officers' families in the bush -An awkward mistake-DrD nearly shot for a bear-Major M Our candles-Fortunate escape from a fatal accident pp ,68-178 CHAPTER XI. 'Now Spring returns '-Sugar-making -Bush psalmody - Bush pre-iching-Worship under difficulties -A clerical Mrs Partington-Biology-A ghost-' It slips good '-Squatters pp. 179—193 CHAPTER XII. Bush magistrates-Indian forest guides-Senses quickened by necessity-Breaking up of the ice-Depth of the frost-A grave in winter^A baU-A holiday coat .... pp. 194-204 via Co7itents, CHAPTER XIII. Wild leeks — Spring birds — Wilson's poem on the blue-bird — Downy woodpeckers — Passenger pigeons — 'iheir uumbers — Roosting places — The frogs — Bull frogs— Tree frogs — Flying squirrels pp. 205 — 217 CHAPTER XIV. Our spring crops — Indian corn — Pumpkins — Melons — Fruits — Wild Flowers pp. 218—224 I CHAPTER XV. The Indians — Wigwams — Dress — Can the Indians be civilized ? — Their past decay as a race — Alleged innocence of savage life — Narrative of Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary pp. 225—257 CH/iPTER AVI. The medicine-man — Painted faces — Medals — An embassy — Religious notions — Feast of the dead — Christian Indians — Visit to the Indians on Lake Huron — Stolidity of the Indians — Henry exorcises an Indian's rifle .... pp. 258 — 276 CHAPTER XVII. The humming-bird — Story ot a pet — Canada a good country for poor men — A bush story of misfortune — Statute Labour — Tortoises — The hay season — Our waggon-driving — Henry and I are nearly drowned — Henry falls ill — Backwood doctors pp. 277 — 29s Co7it€nts. Ix CHAPTER XVIII. American men and women— Fireflies— Provision of insect life- Grasshoppers— Frederick and David leave Canada— Soap- making-Home-made candles-Recipe for washing quickly- Writing letters— The parson for driver . . . pp. 296— 310 CHAPTER XIX. Americanisms-Our poultry-The wasps-Their nests-' Bob's ' skill in killing them— Racoons-A hunt— Racoon cake-The town of Busaco— Summer * sailing '—Boy drowned— French settlers T^r. -,,. ,- PP- 311—324 CHAPTER XX. Apple-bees-Orchards-Gorgeous display of apple-blossom- A meeting in the woods-The ague-Wild parsnips-Man lost '"*^^"°°^^ pp. 325-337 CHAPTER XXI. A tornado— Bats— Deserted lots— American inquisitiveness— An election agent pp, 338-346 CHAPTER XXII. A journey to Niagara-River St Clair-Detroit-A slave's escape -An American steamer-Description of the Falls of Niagara -Fearful catastrophe pp. 347-363 CHAPTER XXIII. The suspension-bridge at Niagara-The whirlpool-The battle of Lundy's Lane -Brock's monument -A soldier nearly drowned ^r PP- 364-371 h Contents. CHAPTER XXIV. The Canadian lakes — The exile's love of home — The coloured people in Canada — Rice — The Maid of the Mist — Home-spun cloth — A narrow road — A grumbler — New England emigrants -A potato-pit — The winter's wood .... pp. 372 — 387 CHAPTER XXV. « Thoughts for the future — Changes — Too-hard study — Educa- tion in Canada — Christmas markets — Winter amusements — Ice-boats — Very cold ice — Oil-springs — Changes on the farm — Growth of Canada — The American climate — Old England again pp. 388—405 LIFE IN THE WOODS. CHAPTER I. Boy-dreams about travelling — Our family determines to ^'O to Canada — The first day on board — Cure for sea-sickness — Oar passengers — Henry's adventure — We encounter a storm — Height of the waves — The bottom of the ocean — A fossil ship — The fishing-grounds — See whales and icebergs — Por- poises— Sea-birds — Lights in the sea — The great Gulf of St Lawrence — Thick ice-fogs — Sec land at last — Sailing up the river — Land at Quebec. WONDER if ever there were a boy who did not Avish to travel ? I know I did, and used to spend many an hour thinking of all the wonderful things I should see, and of what I would bring home when I returned. Books of travel I devoured greedily — and very good reading for boys, as well as for grown men, I have always thought them. I began with * Robinson Crusoe,* like most boys — for who has not read his story ? Burckhardt, the traveller, found a young Arab reading a translation of it in the door of his father's Dreams about Travelling. II ii I ! tent in the desert. But I don't think I ever wished to be like him, or to roam in a wild romantic way, or * go to sea,* as it is called, like many other boys I have known, which is a very different thing from having harmless fancies, that one would like to see strange races of men and strange countries. Some of my schoolmates, whom nothing would content but being sailors, early cured me of any thought of being one, if ever I had it, by what I knev^r of their story when they came back. One of them, James Roper, I did not see for some years after he went off, but when I met him at last among the ships, he was so worn and broken down I hardly knew him again, and he had got so many of the low forecastle ways about him, that I could not bear his company. Another, Robert Simpson, went one voyage to Trebi- zond, but that cured him. He came back perfectly contented to -stay at home, as he had found the romance of sailoring, which had lured him away, a very different thing from the reality. He had never counted on being turned out of his bed every other night or so for something or other, as he was, or being clouted with a wet swab by some sulky fellow, or having to fetch and carry for the men, and do their bidding, or to climb wet rigging in stormy weather, and get drenched every now and then, without any chance of changing his clothes ; not to speak of the difference between his nice room at home and the close, crowaed, low-roofed forecastle, where he could hardly see for tobacco-smoke, and where he had to eat and sleep with The First Day on Board, companions whom he would not have thought of speaking to before he sailed. He came back quite sobered down, and, after a time, went to study law, and is now a barrister in good practice. Yet I was very glad when I learned that we were going to America. The great woods, and the sport I would have with the deer and bears in them, and the Indians, of whom I had read so often, and the curious wildness there was in the thought of settling where there were so few people, and living so differently from anything I had known at home, quite captivated me. I was glad when the day of sailing came, and went on board our ship, the Ocean King, with as much delight as if I had been going on a holiday trip. There were eight of us altogether — five brotners and three sisters (my father and mother were both dead), and I had already one brother in America, while another stayed behind to push his way in England. The anchor once heaved, we were soon on our way down the Mersey, and the night fell on us while we were still exploring the wonders of the ship, and taking an occasional peep over the side at the shore. When we liad got into the Channel, the wind having come round to the south-east, the captain resolved to go by the northern route, pa^ising the upper end of Ireland. All we saw of it, however, was very little ; indeed, most of us did not see it at all, for the first swell of the sea had sent a good many to their berths, in all stages of sick- ness. One old gentV.;man, a Scotchman, who had been '} Cure /or Sea-sick Jicss, I . 1 N i i I! boasting that he had a preventive that would keep him clear of it, made us all laugh by his groans and wretchedness ; for his specific had not only failed, but had set him off amongst the first. He had been told that if he took enough gingerbread and whisky, he might face any sea, and he had followed the advice faithfully ; but as the whisky itself was fit to make him siclj, even on shore, you may judge how much it and the gingerbread together helped him when the ship was heaving and rolling under his feet. We boys did not fail, of course, when we heard him lamenting that either the one or the other had crossed his lips, to come over their names pretty often in his hearing, and advise each other to try some, every mention of the words bringing out an additional shuddev of disgust from the unfor- tunate sufferer. My eldest sister had sent me, just before coming on board, for some laudanum and mustard, which she was to mix and apply some way that was sure, she said, to keep her well ; but she got sick so instantly on the ship beginning to move that she forgot them, and we had the mustard aftenvards at dinner in America, and the laudanum was a long time in the house for medicine. For a few days everything was unpleasant enough, but gradually all got right again, and even the ladies ventured to reappear on deck. Of course, among a number of people gathered in a ship, you were sure to meet strange characters. A little light man in a wig was soon the butt of the cabin, he - ) : I > i I Our Passengers, would ask such silly questions, and say such outrageous things. He was taking cheeses, and tea, and I don't know what else, to America with him, for fear he would get nothing to eat there ; and he was dreadfully alarmed by one of the passengers, who had been over before, telling him he would find cockroach pie the chief dainty in Canada. I believe the cheeses he had with him had come from America at first. He thought the best thing to make money by in Canada was to sow all the country with mustard-seed, it yielded such a great crop, he said ; and he seemed astonished at all the table laughing at the thought of what could possibly be done with it. There was another person in the cabin — a stiff, conceited man, with a very strange head, the whole face and brow running back from the chin, and great standing-out ears. He was a distant relation of some admiral, I believe; but if he had been the admiral himself, he could not have carried his head higher than he did. Nobody was good enough for him. It seemctl a condescension in him to talk with any one. But he soon lost all his greatness, notwithstanding his airs, by his asking one day when we were speaking about Italy, ' What river it was that ran north and south along the coast ? ' in that country. We were speaking of a road, and he thought it was about a river. Then he asked, the same day, where the Danube was, and if it were a large river ; and when some one spoke about Sicily, and said that it had been held by the Carthaginians, he wished to know if these people held it now. Boy as I Henry* s Adventure, I ! I \\ ? 1} ^1 E! was, I could not help seeing what a dreadful thing it was to be so ignorant ; and I determined that I would never be like Mr (I sha'n't tell his name), at any rate, but would learn as much as ever I could. I daresay we were troublesome enough to the captain sometimes, but, if so, he took his revenge on one of us after a time. One day we were playing with a rope and pulley which was hooked high up in the rigging. There was a large loop at the one end, and the other, after passing through the block, hung down on the deck. Henry had just put this loop over his shoulders and fitted it nicely below his arms, when the captain chanced to see him, and, in an instant, before he knew what he was going to do, he had hauled hin* up ever so high, with all the passengers looking at him and laughing at the ridiculous figure he cut. It was some time before he would let him down, and as he was a pretty big lad, and thought himself almost a man, he felt terribly affronted. But he had nothing for it when he got down but to hide in his berth till his pride got cooled and till the laugh stopped. We were all careful enough to keep out of Captain Morrison's way after that. One way or other the days passed very pleasantly to us boys, whatever they were to older people. It was beautiful when the weather was fine and the wind right, to see how we glided through the green galleries of the sea, which rose, crested mth white, at each side. One day and night we had, what we thought, a great storm. The sails were nearly all struck, and I heard IVc encounter a Storm, the mate say that the t>vo that were left did more harm than good, because they only drove the ship deeper into the water. When it grew nearly dark, I crept up the cabin-stairs to look along the deck at the waves ahead. I could see them rising like great black mountains seamed with snow, and coming with an awful motion towards us, making the ship climb a huge hill, as it were, the one moment, and go down so steeply the next, that you could not help being afraid that it was sinking bodily into the depths of the sea. The wind, meanwhile, roared through the ropes and yards, and every little while there was a hollow thump of some wave against the liows, followed by the rush of water over the bulwarks. I had read the account of the storm in Virgil, and am sure he must have seen something like what I saw that night to have written it. There is an ode in Horace to him when he was on the point of setting out on a voyage. Perhaps he saw it then. The description in the Bible is, however, the grandest picture of a storm at sea : * The Lord commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves of the deep. They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths : their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end.' ' The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet* Yet I have found since, that though the waves appear so very high, they are much lower than we sup- 8 Height of the Waves. \ \ '\ w \ pose, our notions of them being taken from looking up at them from the hollow between two. Dr Scores- by, a great authority, measured those of the Atlantic in dififerent weathers, and found that they seldom rise above fifteen feet, a great storm only causing them to rise to thirty-five, or, at most, forty feet, as the height of the Atlantic storm-waves, which is very different from ' running mountains high,' as we often hear said. I could not help pitying the men who had to go up to the yards and rigging in the terrible wind and rain, with the ship heaving and rolling so dread- fully, and work with the icy cold sheets and ropes. Poor fellows ! it seems a wonder how they ever can hold on. Indeed, they too often lose their hold, and then there is no hope for them ; down they go, splash into the wild sea, with such a scream of agony as no one can ever forget after having heard it. My brother, on crossing some years after, saw a man thus lost — a fine, healthy Orkneyman, whom some sudden lurch of the ship threw from the outside of the yard. Though it was broad daylight, and though they would have done anything to help him as they saw him rising on the wave, farther and farther behind them, swimming bravely, they were perfectly unable even to make an effort, the sea rolling so wildly, and the ship tearing on through the waves so swiftly. So they had, with hearts like to break, to let him drown before their very eyes. As we got further over we heard a great deal about the Banks of Newfoundland, and, naturally enough, The Bottom of the Ocean, tliought the shores of that island were what was meant ; but we found, when we reached them, that it ^\'as only the name given to the shallower part of the sea to the south of the coast. The soundings for the electric telegraph have since sho>vn that from Ireland on the one side, and Newfoundland on the other, a level table-land forms the floor of the ocean, at no great depth, for some hundreds of miles, the space between sinking suddenly on both sides into unfathom- able abysses. What the depth of the Atlantic is at the deepest is not known, but I remember seeing a notice of a surveying ship, which had been able to sink a line in the southern section of it to the wonder- ful depth of seven miles, finding the bottom only with that great length of rope. The banks are, no doubt, formed in part from the material carried by the great ocean current which flows up from the Gulf of Mexico, washing the shores all the way; and then, passing Newfoundland, reaches across even to the most north- ern parts of Europe and the Arctic circle. If the quantity of mud, and gravel, and sand deposited on the Banks be great enough to bury some of the many wrecks of all sizes which go to the bottom there, what a wonderful sight some future ages may have ! The floor of the ocean has often, elsewhere, been gradually or suddenly raised into dry land ; and if the Banks should be so, and the ^\Tecks be buried in them before they had rotted away, geologists of those days will perhaps be laying bare in some quarry. 10 i I < 1 A Fossil Ship. now far down in the sea, the outline of a fossil ship, with all the things it had in it when it was lostl We met a great many fishing-boats in this part, some from Newfoundland, some from Nova Scotia, others, again, from the northern coasts of the United States, with not a few all the way from France. We were becalmed one day close to some from the State of Maine, and one of j^them very soon sent off a boat to us with some as fine looking men in it as you could well see, to barter fish with the captain for some pork. For a piece or two of the sailor's mess-pork, which I thought dreadful-looking, it was so yellow and fat, they threw on board quite a number of cod-fish and some haddocks, giving us, I thought, by far the best of the exchange. I am told that a great many of these fishing-vessels are lost every year by storms, and occasionally some are nui down and sunk in a moment by a ship passing over them. They are so rash as to neglect hanging out lights in many cases, and the weather is, moreover, often so very foggy, that, even when they do, it is impossible to see them. The ships, if going at all fast, sound fog-horns every now and then on such days — that is, they should do it — but I fear they sometimes forget. There is far less humanity in some p jople than one would like to see, even the chance of causing death itself seeming to give them no concern. I remember once going in a steamer up the Bay of Fundy, over part of the same Sec W/ialcs and Iccbctxs. II ground, when we struck a fishing-schooner in the dead of the night ; but the captain only swore at it for being in his way, and never stopped to see if it were much injured or not, though for anything he or any one knew, it might be in a sinking state. Whether it be thoughtlessness or passion at the time, or stony hard- heartedness, it is an awful thing to be unkind. Uncle Toby, who put the fly out of the window rather than kill it, makes us love him for his tenderness even in an instance so slight. One day we saw two whales at a short distance from the ship, but their huge black backs, and the spout of water they made from their breathing-holes when they were taking a fresh breath, was all we saw of them. Some of the youngsters, however, made some sport out of the sight by telling a poor simple woman, who had got into the cabin, how they had read of a ship that once struck on a great black island in the middle of the sea and went down, and how the sailors got off on the rock, and landed their pro- visions, and were making themselves comfortable, when one of them unfortunately thought he would kindle a fire to cook something ; but had hardly done it before they discovered that they had got on the back of a sleeping whale, which no sooner felt the heat burning it than it plunged down into the waves with all on it ! It is a part of one of the boys* stories we have all read, but the poor creature believed it, listening to them with her eyes fixed on their faces, f I ■ I ) 12 Icebergs. 1 1 v. and expressing her pity for the sailors who had made the mistake. We had two or three icebergs in sight when near Newfoundland, and very beautiful they were. Only think of great mountains of ice shining in the sun with every colour that light can give, and cascades ot snowy-white water leaping down their sides into the ,sea. Those we saw were perhaps from eighty to a hundred feet high, but they are sometimes even two hundred ; and as there are eight feet of ice below the water for every one above, this would make a two hundred feet iceberg more than the third of a mile from the bottom to the top. They are formed on tlie shores of the icy seas in the north, by the alternate melting and freezing of the edge of those ice-rivers which we call glaciers, which get thrust out from the land till they are undermined by the sea, and cracked by summer thaws, and then tumble into the waters, to find their way wherever the currents may carry them. Dr Kane and Captain M'Clintock both saw them in the different stages of their growth ; and I don't know a more interesting narrative than that of the ascent to the top of the great frozen stream, on the shore of Washington's Land, by the former, and his looking away to the north, east, and south, over the vast, broken, many-coloured continent of ice, which stretches in awful depth and unbroken continuity over Green- land. The icebergs often carry off from the shore a vast quantity of stones and gravel, which gets frozen Porpoises and Sea-birds, 13 into them. Dr Scoresby says he has seen one of them carrying, he should think, from fifty to a hundred thousand tons of rock on it. It has, no doubt, been in this way that most of the great blocks and boulders of stone, difierent from any in their neighbourhood, which lie scattered over many parts of the world, have been taken to their present places.* I must not forget the porpoises — great pig-like. fish, which once or twice mocked us by racing alongside, darting a-head every now and then like arrows, as if to show us how slow we were in comparison — nor the birds, which never left us the whole way, and must sleep on the water when they do sleep — nor the beauti- ful lights which shone in the sea at night. ^Ve used to sit at the stern looking at them for long together. The ridges of the waves would sometimes seem all on lire, and streaks and spots of light would follow the slrip with every moment's progress. Sometimes, as tlie water rushed round the stern and up from beneath, they would glitter like a shower of stars or diamonds, joining presently in a sheet of flame. Now they would look like balls of glowing metal; then, presently, they would pass like ribbons of light. There was no end to the combinations or changes of beauty ; the very water joined to heighten them by its What is known as the 'boulder day,' however, seems rather to be the moraine of ancient glaciers— that is, the wreck of broken nocks torn away by them in their passage through the valleys, and now left bare by their having melted away. H Lights in the Sea, f ceaseless mingling of colours, from the whitest foam, through every shade of green, to the dark mass of the ocean around. These appearances come from the presence of myriads of creatures of all sizes, chiefly the different kinds of Sea-nettles,* some of which are so small as to need a microscope to show their parts, while others form large masses, and shine like the suns of these watery constellations. They are lumin- ous by a phosphoric light they are able to secrete ; their brilliancy being thus of the same kind as that which smokes and burns in the dark from the skin of fish, and makes the lights in so many different insects. The phosphorus used in manufactures is obtained from burned bones. I have often seen a similar light in the back woods on the old half-rotten stumps of trees which had been cut down. The glow-worm of England and the fire-fly of Canada are familiar ex- amples of the same wonderful power of self-illumin- ition. Indeed, few countries are without some species of insect possessing this characteristic. One can't help thinking how universal life is when they see it as it is shown in these sights at sea — millions on millions of shining creatureo in the path of a single ship ; and the happiness which life gives us in our youth makes us admire the kindness of God, who, by making everything so full of it, has crowded the air, and earth, and waters with so much enjoyment. * The jelly-fish, or medusa, which we so often sec on our beaches, is a familiar example of the class. M Thick Ice-fogs. 15 Our sabbaths on board were not quite like those at liome ; but, as we had a clergyman with us, who was going with his family to a chaplaincy in the Far West, we had prayers and sermons in the forenoon, when the weather permitted. But a good many of the passengers were not very respectful to the day, and some, who, I dare say, were very orderly on Sundays at home, seemed to act as if to be on a .voyage made every day a week-day. We were now in the great Gulf of St Lawrence, which was called so because Cabot, who discovered it, chanced to do so on the day set apart to that saint. But we were some time in it before we saw land, and there was more care taken about the position of the ship than ever before, for fear we should, like so many vessels, fall foul of the island of Anticosti, or run on shore in a fog. We had had thick weather occasionally from our approaching Newfoundland, and it still prevailed now and then till we got near Quebec. The icebergs coming down from the north, and the difterent temperature of the air coming over them and over the great frozen regions, cause these thick mists by condensing the evaporation from the warmer sea and preventing its rising into the air. We could sometimes hardly see the length of the bowsprit before us, and as the sun would be shut out for days together, so that we could not find out our position, it made every one anxious and half afraid. Many ships are lost by being muffled in these thick clouds. They i6 Sailing 2ip the River. drive, at full speed, against icebergs or on sunken rocks, or ashore on the wild coast, when they think themselves safe in an open clear sea. I often won- dered when crossing again, some years after, in a great steamer, how we ever escaped. On we would go in it, with the fog-bell ringing and horns blowing, to be sure, but in perfect blind ignorance of what lay a. few yards ahead. Other ships, icebergs, rocks, or the iron shore, might be close at hand, yet on, on, up and down went the great shafts, and beat, beat, went the huge paddle-wheels — the ship trembling all over, as if even it were half uneasy. It is a wonder, not that so many, but that so few, ships should be lost, covering the sea as they do at all seasons, like great flocks of seafowl. After a time the land became visible at last, first on one side and then on the other, and the pilot was taken on board— a curious looking man to most of us, in his extraordinary mufflings, and with his broken French-English. As we sailed up the river the views on the banks became very pleasing. The white houses, with their high roofs, like those we see in pictures of French chateaux, and the churches roofed with tin, and as white underneath as the others, and the line of fields of every shade, from the brown earth to the dark green wheat, and the curious zigzag wooden fences, and the solemn woods, every here and there coming out at the back of the picture, like great grim sentinels of the land, made it impossible to stay away Sailing up the River, 17 from the deck. Then there were the grand sunsets with the water like glass, and the shores reflected in them far down into their depths, and the curtains of gold and crimson in the west, where the sun sank out of sight, and the light changing into crimson, and violet and green, by turns, as the twilight faded into night. i8 I CHAPTER II. « Quebec— Wolfe— Montcalm's skull— Toronto— We set off for the bush— Mud-roads— A rough ride— Our log-house— How it was built— Our barn — We get oxen and cows — Elephant and Buckeye— Unpacking our stores — What some of our neigh- bours brought when they came— Hot days— Bush costumes— Sun-strokes — My sisters have to turn salamanders — Our part of the house-work. UR landing at Quebec was only for a very- short time, till some freight was delivered, our vessel having to go up to Montreal before we left it. But we had stay enough to let us climb the narrow streets of this, the oldest of Canadian cities, and to see some of its sights. The view from different points was unspeak- ably grand to us after being so long pent up in a ship. Indeed, in itself, it is very fine. Cape Diamond and the fortifications hanging high in the air — the great basin below, like a sheet of the purest silver, where a .andred sail of the line might ride in safety — the village spires and the fields of every shape, dotted with countless white cottages, the silver thread of tli£ River St Charles winding hither and thither among them, and, in the distance, shutting in this varied Montcalm^ s SkiilL 19 loveliness, a range of lofty mountains, puqole and blue by turns, standing out against the sky in every form of picturesque beauty, made altogether a glorious panorama. Of course, the great sight of sights to a Briton is the field of battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe, on the 13th September, 1759, won for us, at the price of his own life, the magnificent colonies of what is now British North America. Wolfe's body was taken to England for burial, and now lies in the vault below the parish church at Greenwich. That of Montcalm, the French general, who, also, was killed in the battle, was buried in the Ursuline Convent, where they showed us a ghastly relic of him — his fleshless, eyeless skull, kept now in a little glass case, as if it were a thing fit to be exhibited. It was to me a horrible sight to look at the grinning death's head, and think that it was once the seat of the gallant spirit who died so nobly at his post. His virtues, which all honour, are his fitting memorial in every mind, and his appropriate monument is the tomb erected by his victorious enemies — not this parading him in the dishonour and humiliation of the grave. It is the spirit of which we speak when we talk of a hero, and there is nothing in common with it and the poor mouldering skull that once contained it. Quebec is, as I have said, a beautiful place in sum- mer, but it must be bad enough in winter. The snon- lies till well on in May, and it is so deep that, in the country, everything but houses and trees and other high \\ - f ■1* 20 Toronto, \ \ objects are covered. The whole landscape is one un- broken sheet of white, over which you may go in any direction without meeting or seeing the smallest obstacle. But people get used to anything ; and even the terrible cold is so met and resisted by double window-sashes, and fur caps, and gloves, and coats, that the inhabitants seem actually to enjoy it. When we got to Toronto, we found that my brother Robert, who was already in the country, had been travelling in different directions to look out a place for us, and had at length bought a farm in the township of Bidport, on the banks of the River St Clair. We therefore stayed no longer in Toronto than possible, but it took us some time to get everything put right after the voyage, and we were further detained by a letter from my brother, telling us that the house on the farm could not be got ready for us for a week or two longer. We had thus plenty of time to look about us, and strange enough everything seemed. The town is very different now-a-days ; but, then, it was a straggling collection of wooden houses of all sizes and shapes, a large one next to a miserable one-storey shell, placed with its end to the street. There were a few brick houses, but only a few. The streets were like a newly-ploughed field in rainy-weather, for mud, the waggons often sinking almost to the axles in it. There was no gas, and the pavements were both few and bad. It has come to be a fine place now, but to us it seemed very wretched. While we were waiting, we laid in 1 Mud-roads. 21 \v1iatever provision we thought we would need for a good while, everything being much cheaper in Toronto than away in the bush. A month or less saw us moving, my sisters going with Andrew and Henry by water, while Frederic was left behind in an office ; Robert, my Canadian brother, and I, going by land, to get some business done up the country as we passed. The stage in which we took our places was a huge affair, hung on leather springs, with a broad shelf behind, supported by straps from the upper corners, for the luggage. There were three seats, the middle one movable, which it needed to be, as it came exactly in the centre of the door. The machine and its load were drawn by four horses, rough enough, but of good bottom, as they say. The first few miles were very pleasant, for they had been macadamized, but after that, what travelling ! The roads had not yet dried up after the spring rains and thaws, and as they were only mud, and much travelled, the most the horses could do was to pull us through at a walk. When we came to a very deep hole, we had to get out till the coach floundered through it. Every here and there, where the water had over- flowed from the bush and washed the road completely away in its passage across it, the ground was strewn with rails which had been taken from the nearest fences to hoist out some wheels that had stuck fast. At some places there had been a wholesale robbery of rails, which had been thrown into a gap of this kind in the road, till it was practicable for travellers or waggons. ■ til 22 .'i , M ^^ i^^/^^/^ i^/^,. After a time we had tr^ k,m i- coach and beta. oJ:eS'T '" "' "™'°"^ °^ ^ ^' "'ere strong bo. se on T' °P'" '^'"'eS""- i"-. .a,V across tie'to r: , S '^t' t' •'^"^^^ °^ •en feet long and aboul fou blad-w "^ "7""'= «ome of the worst sta^e, Bnth . "' ""'""Sh sot back our coach IL-nit ""'""'°"' ^^'^ smpothly enough, till „. ^Ih ! " ""'^ '"'" °" •0 be crossed on a road r^^' :::'2lf'f' 'f and laid side bv ^idn m • / ^"^° ^^"S^^s Of others placed tg™^^^^^ smooth it would be with" , , " ™"^ """"^ how the one next it-. H '°S ^ •^'^'^^ent size from ;'JH.etween«epatriarchsof the forest eV '"'""'■''^ "^^ '•'^"'"',' "''"'•" on Canadian farmTK:"^°"'^°^"-'"-chhad,at '''•'' 'eft special inZcti:::^ '''^"- ^^ '^-«- ^■"'" er ones, but the .ch^P j , T'' '""'' °' "- e-ctly the wrong „ay Tnd , h ""'^^^'""^ h'", Po.n.ed out with especfe, "al .'"^ '<''™ «>o- S-atest disiike. BuLing the ho "'^"'^ °' ''- ^-r heavy work, for it wa^'d %'""^' "''^'^ "^en -''oie thickness of the treTs pt/ '^"' '°«'' "- ^'ory- and a half high Th °"' °" '"'other, a ;'-' they calU -bee' toll rf^"-^ "^^ „ade "'-^had come without I'J '"''^' "-">« *», ""derstanding that each wouTd"' ?«"' ""' '^"h the I '"=y manage a difficult b^infrf '' '^ ''^^ g'-<=n- ''e outside of a log-hoLe ' "''" "'^^''''S "P ;'-;;• Krst, the C : ,:';'- -f^ than one wou, - the sides and tke en^HZT" """" '^"^"'^ ''■-»<' '0 make then. kee?o;:tre:'---''ed at secner, then an equal Iloi0 it 7i.'as Bnill. 25 number are put at the four sides to be ready, and tlie first stage is over. Tiie next step is to get four laid in the i)roper positions on the ground, and then to get up the rest, layer by layer, on the top of each other, till the whole are in their places. It is a terrible strain (111 the rnen, for there is nothing but sheer strength to help them, except that they put poles from the top of the last log raised, to the ground, and then, \yith handspokes, force another up the slope to its destined position. I have known many men terribly wrenched by the handspoke of some other one slipping and letting the whole weight of one end come upon the I)erson next him. The logs at the front and back were all fully twenty feet long, and some of them eighteen inches thick, so that you may judge their weight. After the square frame had been thus piled up, windows and a door where cut with axes, a board at the sides of each keeping the ends of the logs in their places. You may wonder how this could be done, but backwoodsmen are so skilful with the axe that it was done very neatly. The sashes for the windows and the planking for different parts of the house were got from a saw-mill some distance off, across the river, and my brother put in the glass. Of course there were a great many chinks between the logs, but these were filled up, as well as possible, with billets and chips of wood, the whole being finally coated and made air- tight with mortar. Thus the logs looked as if built up with lime, the great black trunks of the trees altemat- ^1 M 9 26 Our Log- house. ing with the grey belts between. The frame of the roof was made of round poles, flattened on the top, on which boards were put, and these again were covered with shingles — a kind of wooden slate made of split pine, which answers very well. The angles at the ends were filled up with logs fitted to the length, and fixed in their i)laces by wooden pins driven through the roof-pole at each corner. On the whole house there were no nails used at all, except on the roof. Wooden pins, and an auger to make holes, made every- thing fast. Inside, it was an extraordinary place. The floor was paved with pine slabs, the outer planks cut from logs, with the round side down, and fixed by wooden pins to sleepers made of thin young trees, cut the right lengths. Overhead, a number of similar round poles, about the thickness of a man's leg, supported the floor of the upper story, which was to be my sisters' bed- room. They had planks, however, instead of boards, in honour of their sex, perhaps. They had to climb to this paradise by an extraordinary ladder, made with the never-failing axe and auger out of green, round wood. I used always to think of Robinson Crusoe getting into his fortification when I saw them going up. The chimney was a wonderful affair. It was large enough to let you walk up most of the way, and could hold, I can't tell how many logs, four or five feet long, for a fire. It was built of mud, and when whitewashed looked very well — at least we came to like it ; it was How it zuas Built. ^7 so clean and cheerful in the winter-time. But we had to pull it down some years after, and get one built of brick, as it was ahvays getting out of repair. A par- tition was put up across the middle and then divided again, and this made two bed-rooms for my brothers, and left us our solitary room which Avas to serve for kitchen, dining-room, and drawing-room, the outer door opening into it. As to paint, it was out of the question, but we had lime for whitewash, and what with it and some newspapers which my brothers pasted up in their bed-rooms, and a few pictures we brought from home, we thought we were quite stylish. There was no house any better, at any rate, in the neighbourhood, and, I suppose, we judged by that. To keep out the rain and the cold — for rats were not known on the river for some years after — the whole of the bottom log outside had to be banked up after our arrival, the earth being dug up all round and thrown against it. The miserable shanties in which some settlers manage to live for a time are half buried by this process, and the very wretched ones built by labourers alongside public works while making, look more like natural mounds than human habitations. I have often thought it was a curious thing to see how people, when in the same, or nearly the same, circum- stances, fall upon similar plans. Some of the Indians in America, for instance, used to sink a pit for a house and build it round with stones, putting a roof on the walls, which reached only a little above the ground ; i\ ii I* 28 Our Log-house. \ i i^i and antiquarians tell us that the early Scotch did the very same. Then Xenophon, long ago, and Curzon, in our day, tell us how they were often like to full through the roof of the houses in Armenia into the middle of the family huddled up, with their oxen, beneath, their dwellings being burrowed into the side of a slope, and showing no signs of their presence from above. But our house was not like this, I am happy to say ; it was on the ground, not in it, ]"id was very warm for Canada, when the wind did i.ot come against the door, which was a very poor one, of inch-thick wood. The thickness of the logs kept out the cold wonderfully, though that is a very ambiguous word for a Canadian house, which would need to be made two logs thick to be warm without tremendous fires — at least, in the open unsheltered country. The houses made of what they call * clap-boards ' — that is, of narrow boards three-quarters of an inch thick, and lathed and plastered inside — are very much colder ; indeed, they are, in my opinion, awful, in any part of them where a fire is not kept up all winter. One thing struck me very much, that locks and bolts seemed to be thought very useless things. Most of the doors had only wooden latches, made with an axe or a knife, and fastened at night by a wooden pin stuck in above the bar. We got water from the river close at hand ; a plank run out into the stream form- ing what they called * a wharf,' to let us get depth enough for our pitchers and pails. We gel Oxen and Cozus, 29 I Besides the house, my brother had got a barn built not far from the house — of course a log one — on the piece clear of trees. It was about the size of the house, but the chinks between the logs were not so carefully filled up as in it. The squirrels, indeed, soon found this out, and were constantly running in and out when we had any grain in it. The upper part was to hold our hay, and half of the ground-floor was for pur other crops, the cows having the remainder for their habitation. We bought a yoke of oxen — that is, two — a few days after our arrival, and we began with two cows, one of them a pretty fair milker, but the other, which had been bought at an extra price, was chosen by Robert for its fine red skin, and never had given much milk, and never did. The oxen, great unwieldy brutes, were pretty well broken ; but they were so dif- ferent from anything we had ever seen for ploughing or drawing a waggon, that we were all rather afraid of their horns at first, and not very fond of having any- thing to do with them. We had bought a plough and harrows, and I don't know what else, before coming up, .nnd had brought a great many things besides from England, so that we had a pretty fair beginning in farm implements. An ox-waggon was very soon added to our purchases — a rough affair as could be. It was nothing but two planks for the bottom and one for each side, with short pieces at the ends, like the waggon- stage, on the road from Toronto — a long box on four wheels, about the height of a cart. The boards were 3° ElcpJiant and Buckeye. ■ % I '■ * •r I f^ quite loose, to let them rise and fall in going over the roads when they were bad. The oxen were fastened to this machine by a yoke, which is a heavy piece of hard wood, with a hollow at each end for the back of the necks of the oxen, and an iron ring in the middle, on the under side, to slip over a pin at the end of the waggon-pole, the oxen being secured to it by two thin collar^ : *" ■~ tough wood called hickory, which were just piece.. ,mt to fit their deep necks, the ends being pushed up through two holes in the yokes at each side, and fastened by pins at the top. There was no har- ness of any kind, and no reins, a long wand serving to guide them. I used at first to think it was a very brave thing to put the yoke on them or take it off. The names of our two were Elephant and Buckeye, the one, as his name showed, a great creature, but as lazy as he was huge ; the other, a much nicer beast, somewhat smaller, and a far better worker. They were both red and white, and so patient and quiet that I used to be ashamed of nyself when I got angry at them for their solemn slowness and stupidity. Had we been judges of cattle we might have got much better ones for the money they cost us ; bat my brother Andrew, who bought them, had never had any more to do with oxen till then than to help to eat them at dinner. However, we never bought anything more from the man who sold us them. Our first concern when we had got fairly into the house was to help to get the furniture and luggage Unpacking our Stores. 31 -' brought from the wharf, two miles oiif, for we had to leave everything except our bedding there on landing. It was a great job to get all into the waggon, and then to open it after reaching the house. The wharf was a long wooden structure, built of logs driven into the shallow bed of the river for perhaps a hundred yards out to the deep water, and planked over. There was a broad place at the end to turn a waggon, but so much of it was heaped up with what they called * cord- wood ' — that is, v/ood for fuel, cut four feet long — that it took some management to get this done. A man whom we had hired as servant of all work, at two pounds and his board and lodging a-month, brought down the waggon, and I shall never forget how we laughed at his shouting and roaring all the way to the oxen, as he walked at their heads with a long beach wand in his hand,, He never ceased bellowing at them in rough, angry names, except to vary them by orders, such as Ha^v ! Gee ! Woa ! Hup ! which were very ridiculous when roared at their ears loud enough to have let them know his wishes if th^y had been on the other side of the river. Somehow, every one who drives oxen in Canada seems to have got into the same plan ; we ourselves, indeed, fell into it more than I would have thought after a time. When we had begun to move the luggage, what boxes on boxes had to be lifted ! We all lent a hand, but it was hard work. There was the piano, and the eight-day clock, in a box like a coffin, and carpets, and a huge wardrobe, r 32 Uiipackhig our Stores. packed full of I don't know what, large enough to have done for a travelling show, and boxes of books, and crockery, and tables, and a great carpenter's chest, not to speak of barrels of oatmeal, and flour, and salt, and one of split peas. I think the books were the heaviest, except that awful wardrobe and the chest of drawers, which were all packed full of something. But they paid over and over for all the trouble and weight, proving the greatest possible blessing. If we had not brought them we would have turned half- savages, I suppose, for there were none to buy nearer than eighty or ninety miles, and, besides, we would not have had money to buy them. We had a whole set of Sir Walter Scott's charming stories, which did us a world of good, both by helping us to spend the winter evenings pleasantly, by the great amount of instruction in history and antiquarian lore they con- tained, and by showing my young sisters, especially, that all the world were not like the rude people about us. They got a taste for elegance and refinement from them that kept them ladies in their feelings while they had only the life of servants. When we had got all the things into the house, the next thing was to unpack them. A large pier-glass, which would have been very useful, but rather out of the way in such a house, was discovered to be shivered to fragments ; and some crockery had found the shak- ing on the journey too much for its powers of resist- ance. That horrid wardrobe, which had sprained our What some of our Neighbours bro'iight. 33 backs to get on the waggon, would barely go in at the door, and we were very much afraid at first, that, after brinsiner it more than three thousand miles, we should liave to roof it over, cut holes in it, and make it a hen-house. It was all but too large, like the picture in the * Vicar of Wakefield,' which would not go in at any door when it was brought home. There was not room for nearly all our furniture, and one end of niy sisters' loft was packed like a broker's store-room with part of it. My brother's being in America before had, liowever, saved us from bringing as outrageous things as some who afterwards settled in the neighbourhood. I remember one family who brought ever so many huge heavy grates, not knowing that there was no coal in Canada, and that they were useless. They would, indeed, be able to get Ohio coal now, in the larger towns ; but there was none then anywhere. The only fuel burned all through the country parts, in fireplaces, is, still, great thick pieces of split logs, four feet long. One settler from Ireland had heard that there were a great many ratdesnakes in Canada; and as he had been a cavalry volunteer, and had the accoutrements, he brought a brass helmet, a regulation sabre, buck- skin breeches, and jack-boots with him, that he might march safely through the jungle which he supposed he should find on his route. The young clergyman who aftenvards came out had a different fear. He thought there might be no houses for him to sleep in at nights, and brought out a hammock to swing up under the 3 I j5"i W Hi 1 ' j 'I \\\ 34 Wkal some of our Neighbours brought, trees. What he thought the people to whom he was to preach lived in, I don't know ; perhaps he fancied we cooked our dinners under the trees, and lived without houses, like the Indians. In some countries, hammocks are used in travelling through uninhabited places, on account of the poisonous insects on the ground' and the thickness of the vegetation ; but in Canada such a thing is never heard of, houses being always within reach in the parts at all settled ; and travellers sleep on the ground when beyond the limits of civilization. But to sleep in the open air at all makes one such a figure before morning with mosquito- bites, that nobody would try it a second time, if he could help it. I was once on a journey up Lake Huron, of which I shall speak by and by, where we had to sleep a night on the ground, and, what with ants running over us, and with the mosquitoes, we had a most wretched time of it. A friend who was with me had his nose so bitten that it was thicker above than below, and looked exactly as if it had been turned up- side down in the dark. It took us some time to get everything fairly in order, but it was all done after a while. We were all in good health ; everything before us was new ; and the weather, though very warm, was often delightful in the evenings. Through the day it was sometimes very oppressive, and we had hot nights now and then that were still worse. A sheet seemed as heavy as if it had been a pair of blankets, and when we were sure the Hot Days. 'bS door was fast, wc were glad to throw even it aside. We always took a long rest at noon till the sun got somewhat cooler, but the heat was bad enough even in the shade. I have known it pretty nearly, if not quite, loo" some days in the house. I remember hear- ing some old gentlemen once talking about it, and telling each other how they did to escape it : the one declared that the coolest part of the house was below the bed, and the other, a very stout clergyman, sa'id he found the only spot for study was in the cellar. Captain W used to assert that it was often as hot in Canada as in the West Indies. My sisters never went with so little clothing before ; and, indeed, it was astonishing how their circumference collapsed under the influence of the sun. As to us, we thought only of coolness. Coarse straw hats, with broad brims, costing about eightpence apiece, with a handkerchief in the crown to keep the heat off the head ; a shirt of blue cotton, wide trowsers of dark printed calico, or, indeed, of anything thin, and boots, composed our dress. But this was elaborate, compared with that adopted by a gentleman who was leading a bachelor life back in the bush some distance from us. A friend went to see him one day, and found him fry- ing some bacon on a fire below a tree before his door ; — a potato-pot hanging by a chain over part of it, from a bough — his only dress being a shirt, boots, a hat, and a belt round his waist, with a knife in it. He had not thought of any one penetrating to his wilderness 3<5 Btish Costumes, liabitation, and laughed as heartily at being caught in such a plight as my friend did at catching him. For my part, I thought I should be cooler still if I turned up my shirt-sleeve ; but my arms got forthwith so tanned and freckled, that even yet they are more useful than beautiful. One day there chanced to be a torn place on my shoulder, which I did not notice on going out. I thought, after a time, that it was very hot, but took it for granted it could not be helped. When I came in at dinner, however, I was by no means agreeably surprised when my sister Margaret called out to me, * George, there's a great blister on your shoulder,* which sure enough there was. I took care to have always a whole shirt after that. ^Ve had hardly been a month on the river when we heard that a man, fresh from England, who had been at work for a neighbour, came into the house one after- noon, saying he had a headache, and died, poor fellow, in less than an hour. He had had a sun-stroke. Some- times those who are thus seized fall down at once in a fit of apoplexy, as was the case with Sir Charles Napier in Scinde. I knew a singular instance of what the sun sometimes does, in the case of a young man, a plumber by trade, who had been working on a roof in one of the towns on a hot day. He was struck down in an instant, and was only saved from death by a fellow- workman. For a time he lost his reason, but that gradually came back. He lost the power of every part of his body, however, except his head, nothing remain- Stm-slrol:es. 37 ing alive, you may say, but that. He could move ur control his eyes, mouth, and neck, but that was all. lie had been a strong man, but he wasted away till his legs and arms were not thicker than a child's. Yet he got much better eventually, after being bedridden for several years, and when I last was at his house, could creep about on two crutches. I used to pity my sisters, who had to work over t^ie fire, cooking for us. It was bad enough for girls who had just left a fashionable school in England, and were quite young yet, to do work which hitherto they had always had done for them, but to have to stoop over a fire in scorching hot weather must have been very ex- hausting. They had to bake in a large iron pot, set upon embers, and covered with them over the lid ; and the dinner had to be cooked on the logs in the kitchen fireplace, until we thought of setting up a contrivance made by laying a stout stick on two upright forked ones, driven into the ground at each end of a fire kindled outside, and hanging the pots from it. While I think of it, what a source of annoyance the cooking on the logs in the fireplace was before we got a crane ! I remember we once had a large brass panfull of rasp- berry jam, nicely poised, as we thought, on the burn- ing logs, and just ready to be lifted off, when, lo ! some of the firewood below gave way and down it went into the ashes ! Baking was a hard art to learn. What bread we had to eat at first ! We used to quote Hood's lines — hi J^i il 38 i fli J Going to Mill, 'Who has not heard of home-made bread — Tliat heavy compound of putty and lead 'i ' But practice, and a few lessons from a neighbour's wife, made my sisters quite expert at it. We had some trouble in getting flour, however, after our first stock ran out. The mill was five miles off, and, as we had only oxen, it was a tedious job getting to it and back again. One of my brothers used to set off at five in the morning, with his breakfast over, and was not back again till nine or ten at night — that is, after we had wheat of our own. It had to be ground while he waited. But it was not all lost time, for the shoe- maker's was near the mill, and we always made the same journey do for both. In winter we were some- times badly off when our flour ran short. On getting to the mill, we, at times, found the wheel frozen hard, and that the miller had no flour of his own to sell. I have known us for a fortnight having to use potatoes instead of bread, when our neighbours happened to be as ill-provided as we, and could not lend us a * baking.' But baking was not all that was to be done in a house like ours, with so many men in it. No servants could be had, the girls round, even when their fathers had been labourers in England, were quite above going out to service, so tliat my sisters had their hands full. We tried to help them as much as we could, bringing in the wood for the fire, and carrying all the water from the river. Indeed, I used to think it almost a pleasure to fetch the water, the river was so beautifully clear. ^ Our part of the Honscuwk. 39 Never was crystal more transparent. I was wont to idle as well as work while thus employed, looking at the beautiful stones and pebbles that lay at the bottom, far beyond the end of the plank that served for our * wharf.' ' I! i ^iii 40 fJI Ki CHAPTER III. « Clearing the land — David's bragging, and the end of it — Burning the log-heaps — Our logging bee— What prejudice can do — Our fences and crops nearly burned — The woods on fire — Building a snake-fence — ' Shingle * pigs give us sore trouble — * Breachy ' horses and cattle. HE first thing that had to be done with the land was to make a farm of it, by cutting down and burning as many trees as we could before the end of August, to have some room for sowing wheat in the first or second week of September. It was now well on in June, so that we had very little time. However, by hiring two men to chop (we didn't board or lodge them) and setting our other hired men to help, and with the addition of what my brothers Robert and David could do, we expected to get a tolerably-sized field ready. Henry and I wei e too young to be of much use ; Henry, the elder, being only about fifteen. As to Andrew, he could not bear such work, and paid one of the men to work for him. Yet both he and we had all quite enough to do, in the lighter parts of the business. We had got axes in Toronto, and our man fitted them into the crooked handles which they use in Canada. A British axe, •ill WMmULl ■ L I, .U|imUU Clearing the Land, 4-1 with a long, thin blade, only set the men a laughing ; and, indeed, it chanced to be a very poor affair ; for one day the whole face of it flew off as Robert was making a furious cut with it at a thistle. The Canadian axes were shaped like wedges, and it was wonderful to see how the men made the chips fly oat of a tree with them. We got up in the morning with the sun, and went out to work till breakfast, the men whacking away with all their might ; Nisbet, our own man, as we called him, snorting at every stroke, as if that helped him, and my two elder brothers using their axes as well as they could. We, younger hands, had, for our part, to lop off the branches when the trees were felled. My brothers soon got to be very fair choppers, and could finish a pretty thick tree sooner than you would sup- pose. But it was hard work, for some of the trees were very large. One in particular, an elm, which the two men attacked at the same time, was so broad across the stump, after it was cut down, that Nisbet, who was a fair-sized man, when he lay down across it, with his head at the edge on one sidr*. did not reach with his feet to the other. But, thicker or thinner, all came down as we advanced. The plan was to make, first, a slanting stroke, and, then, another, straight in, to cut off the chip thus made ; thus gradually reaching the middle, leaving a smooth, flat stump about three feet high underneath, and a slope inwards above. The one side done, they began the same process with the other, hacking away chip after chip from the butt, till "i V' i i 1 ■ V t I 111 k I. . IKi .1 ■^ ( t)Z Spearmg Fish. a treasure he was parting with. !My brother found it hopeless to get any information from him, nothing but grunts and an odd word or two of English following: a number of inquiries. After a time the bargain was struck, and having received the money and the tobacco, he and his spouse departed, laughing in their sleeve, I dare say, at their success in getting a canoe well sold which needed two or three men to propel it at a reasonable rate. It was with this affair we used to go out on our spearing expeditions. A cresset, like those used in old times to hold watchmen's lights, and a spear with three prongs and a long handle, were all the apparatus required. The cresset was fixed in the bows of the canoe, and a knot of pitch-pine kindled in it, threw a bright light over and through the water. Only very still nights would do, for if there was any ripple the fish could not be seen. When it was perfectly calm we filled our cresset, and setting it a-fire, one of us would take his place near the light, spear in hand, standing ready to use it ; and another seated himself at the stern with a paddle, and, with the least possible noise, pushed off along the shallow edge of the river. The fish could be seen a number of feet down, resting on the bottom ; but in very deep vvrater the spear could not get down quickly enough, while the position of the fish itself was changed so much by the refrac- tion of the light, that it was very hard to hit it even if we were not too slow. The stillness of the nights — the Speariftg Fish, 93 beauty of the shining skies — the delicious mildness of the autumnal evenings — the sleeping smoothness of the great river — the play of light and shade from our fire — the white sand of the bottom, with the forms of the fish seen on it as if through coloured crystal — and the excitement of darting at them every few yards, made the whole delightful. At first we always missed, by miscalculating the position of our intended booty ; but, after going out a few times with John Courtenay, a neighbour, and noticing how much he allowed" for the difference bet^veen the real and the apparent spot for which to aim, we got the secret of the art, and gradually managed to become pretty good marksmen. There was an island in the river, at the upper end of which a long tongue of shallow bottom reached up the stream, and on this we found the best sport : black bass, pike, herrings, white-fish, cat-fish, sun-fish, and I don't know what else, used to fall victims on this our best preserve. I liked almost as well to paddle as to stand in the bows to spear the fish, for watching the spearsman and looking down at the fish kept you in a flasn of pleasant excitement all the tim^. Not a word was spoken in the canoe, but I used to think words enough. ' There's a great sun-fish at the right hand, let me steer for it ; ' and silently the paddle would move us towards it, my brother motioning me with his nand either to hold back or turn more this way, or that, as seemed necessary. * I wonder if he'll get him ! ' would rise in my mind, as the spear was slowly I 1% E;! 94 Henrys Cold Bath. 11 ii i ill poised. * Will he dart off ? ' * He moves a little — ah ! there's a great pike ; make a dart at him — whew, he's gone ! ' and, sure enough, only the bare ground was visible. Perhaps the next was a white-fish, and in a moment a successful throw would transfix it, and then, the next, it would be in the bottom of the canoe. But it was not always plain sailing with us, for Henry was so fierce in his thrusts at first, that, one night, when he majie sure of getting a fine bass he saw, he over- balanced himself with a jerk, and went in along with the spear, head over heels. The water was not deep enough to do him any harm, but you may be sure we did not fish any more that night. Picking himself up, the unfortunate wight vented his indignation on the poor fish, which, by most extraordinary logic, he blamed for his calamity. I couldn't for the world help laughing ; nor could Henry himself, when, he had got a little over his first feelings of astonishment and mortification. The quantity of fish that some can get in a night's spearing is often wonderful. I have watched Cour- tenay, on a night when fish were plenty, lifting them from the water almost every minute, though very few were larger than herrings, and he had only their backs at which to aim. In some parts of Canada there was higher game than in our waters — the salmon-trout, which is often as large as our salmon, and the * maske- longe,' a corruption of the French words * masque ' and * longue,' a kind of pike with a projecting snout, Canadian Thunderstorms. 95 whence its name — offering a prize of which we could not boast. It must be hard work to get such prey out of the water, but the harder it is the more exciting is the sport for those who are strong enough. The Indians in some districts live to a great extent on the fish they get in this way. I had almost forgotten to speak of the thunder and lightning which broke on the sultriness of our hottest summer weather. Rain is much less frequent in Canada than in Britain, but when it does come, it often comes in earnest. It used to rebound from the ground for inches, and a very few minutes were suffi- cient to make small torrents run down every slope in the ground. When we aftenvards had a garden in front of the house, we found it Avas almost impossible to keep the soil on it from the violence of the rains. Indeed, we gave up the attempt on finding everything we tried fail, and sowed it all with grass, to the great delight of the calves, to whom it was made over as a nursery. There is music, no doubt, in the sound of rain, both in the light patter of a summer shower, and in the big drops that dance on the ground ; but there are differences in this as in other kinds. I have stood sometimes below the green branches in the woods when a thin cloud was dropping its wealth on them, and have been charmed by the murmur. But the heavy rain that came most frequently in the hot weather, falling as if through some vast cullender, was more solemn, and filled you with something like awe. li f:. ■X ■:. ,,1 96 Cariadian Thunderstorms. It was often accompanied by thunder and lightning, such as those who live in cooler climates seldom hear or see. The amount of the electricity in the atmos- phere of any country depends very much on the heat of the weather. Captain Grahame, who had com- manded a frigate on the East India station, told me once, when on a short visit, that, in the Straits of Malacca, he had to order the sails to be furled every day at one o'clock, a thunderstorm coming on regu- larly at that hour, accompanied with wind so terrible that the canvas of the ship would often have been torn into ribbons, and knotted into hard lumps, if he had not done so. Thunderstorms are not so exact nor so frequent in Canada, but they came too often in some years for my taste. I was startled out of my sleep one night by a peal that must have burst within a few yards of the house, the noise exceeding anything I ever heard before or since. You don't know what thunder is till a cloud is fired that way at your ear. Our poor dog Yorick, which we had brought from England with us, was so terrified at the violence of the storms that broke over us once and again, that he used to jump in through any open window, if the door were shut, and hide himself under the bed till all was quiet. He lost his life at last, poor brute, through his terror at thunder, for one day when it had come on, the windows and doors happening to be closed, he rushed into the woods in his mortal fear, and coming on the ahanty of a settler, flew in and secreted himself below ^(^•*.- Canadian Thunder storms, 97 his accustomed shelter, the bed. The owner of the liouse, not knowing the facts of the case, naturally enough took it for granted that the dog was mad, and forthwith put an end to his troubles by shooting him. It was a great grief to us all to lose so kind and intelligent a creature, but we could hardly blame his destroyer. There is a wonderful sublimity sometimes in the darkness and solemn hush of nature that goes before one of these storms. It seems as if the pulse of all things were stopped. The leaves tremble, though there is not a breath of wind ; the birds either hide in the forest, or fly low, in terror ; the waters look black, and are ruffled over all their surface. It seems as if all things around knew of the impending terrors. \ never was more awed in my life, I think, than at the sight of the heavens and the accompanying suspense of nature one afternoon, in the first summer we were on the river. The tempest had not burst, but it lay in the bosom of portentous clouds, of a strange, un- earthly look and colour, that came down to within a ve*^' short distance of the earth. Not a sou^ broke the awful silence ; the wind, as well as all things else, was still, and yet the storm-clouds moved steadily to the south, apparently only a very few yards higher than the trees. The darkness was like that of an eclipse, and no one could have said at what instant the prison of the lightnings and thunders would rend above him and envelope him in its horrors. I could i^ m ■11 StII q8 Canadian Thiindcrstonns, \ ' not, dared not stir, but stood where I was till the great grey masses, through which it seemed as if I could see the shimmer of the aerial fires, had sailed slowly over to the other side of the river, and the light, in part, returned. The lightning used to leave curious traces of its visits in its effects on isolated trees all round. There was a huge pine in a field at the back of the house that had been its sport more than once. The great top had been torn off, and the trunk was split into ribbons, which hung far down the sides. Many others which I have seen in different parts had been ploughed into deep furrows almost from top to bottom. The telegraph-posts, since they have been erected, have been an especial attraction. I have seen fully a dozen of them in one long stretch split up, and torn spirally, through their whole length, by a flash which had struck the wire and run along it. That more people are not killed by it seems wonderful ; yet there are many accidents of this kind, after all. In the first or second year of our settlement a widow lady, living a few miles up the river, was found dead in her bed killed in a storm, and we afterwards heard of several others perishing in the same way. Hail often accompanies thunder and lightning in Canada, and the pieces are sometimes of a size that lets one sympathize with the Egyptians when Moses sent down a similar visitation on them. I remember reading of a hailstorm on the Black Sea in the midst Our Golden Autumns. 99 of hot weather, the pieces in which were, some of them, a pound weight, threatening death to any one they might strike. I never saw them such a size hi Canada, but used to think that it was bad enough to have them an inch and a half long. They must be formed by a cloud being whirled up, by some current in the air, to such a height as freezes its contents even in the heat of summer. The weather in the fall was delightful — better, I think, than in any other season of the year. Getting its name from the beginning of the fall of the leaves, this season lasts on till winter pushes it asie^e. Day after day was bright and almost cloudless, and the heat had passed into a balmy mildness, which made the very feeling of being alivt a pleasure. Every- thing combined to make the landscape beautiful. The great resplendent river, flowing so softly it seemed scarce to move — its bosom a broad sheet of molten silver, on which clouds, and sky, and white sails, and even the farther banks, with the houses, and fields, and woods, far back from the water, were painted as in a magic mirror — was a beautiful sight, of which we never tired ; like the swans in St Mary's Loch, which, Wordsworth says, 'float double, swan and shadow,' we had ships in as well as on the waters and not a branch, nor twig, nor leaf of the great trees nor of the bushes, nor a touch in the open landscape, was awanting, as we paddled along the shores, or looked across. ?■ 100 Our Golden AiUunins, \ f And what shall I say of the sunsets? Milton says — * Now came still evening on, and twilight grey Had in her sober livery all thing"? clad.' But this would not do for some of those autumn days. The yellow light would fill earth, and air, and sky. The trees, seen between you and the setting sun, were shining amber, in trunk, and branch, and leaf; and the windows of neighbours' houses were flaming gold; while here and there branches on which the sun shone at a different angle seemed light itself; and in the distance the smoke rose purple, till, while you gazed, the whole vision faded, and faded, through every shade of green and violet, into the dark-blue of the stars. By the beginning of September the first frosts had touched the trees, and the change of colour in the leaves at once set in. It is only when this has taken place that the forests put on their greatest beauty; though, indeed, a feeling of sadness was always asso- ciated with these autumnal splendours, connected as they are, like the last colours of the dolphin, with thoughts of decay and death. With each day, after the change had commenced, the beauty increased. Each kind of tree — the oak, the elm, the beach, the ash, the birch, the walnut, and, above all, the maple — had its own hue, and every hue was lovely. Then there were the solemn pines, and tamaracks, and ce- The Change of the Leaf. i o i dars, setting ofif the charms of their gayer bretlircn by their sober green, which at a distance looked ahiiost black. The maple-leaf, the first to colour, remained, throughout, the most beautiful, in its golden yellow antl crimson. No wonder it has become to Canada what the shamrock is to Ireland, or the rose and the thistle to England and Scotland. The woods looked finest, I think, when the tints are just beginning, and green, }ellow, and scarlet are mingled in every shade- of transition. But what sheets of golden flame they became after a time ! Then every leaf had something of its own in which it differed from all others. Yonder, the colours blended together into pink of the brightest tint; then came a dash of lilac and blue, and, away by itself, a clump rose, like an islet, of glowing red gold. Lofty trees, and humble undergrowth, and climbing creepers — all alike owned the magic influence, and decked the landscape with every tint that can be borrowed from the light, till the whole looked like the scenery of some fairy tale. The sunsets, as the year deepened into winter, grew, I thought, if possible, more and more glorious. The light sank behind mountains of gold and purple, and shot up its splendours, from beyond, on every bar and fleck of cloud, to the zenith. Then came the slow advance of night, with the day retreating from before it to the glorious gates of the west, at first in a flush of crimson, then in a flood of amber, till at last, with a lingering farewell, it left us in paler and paler green. H '■I . : I II I S-'-' II.' (, :i M iiV lllH ill n ■I I I I* M 1 1, 11 ■i. ! i \l if^ 102 Indian Summer. I have seen every tree turned into gold as I looked across the river, as the evening fell. Milman speaks in one of his poems, of the 'golden air of heaven.' Such sights as these sunsets make the image a reality, and almost involuntarily lead one, as he gazes on the wide glory that rests on all things, to think how beautiful the better world must be if this one be so lovely. The Indian summer came with the end of October and lasted about ten days, a good deal of rain having fallen just before. While it lasted, it was deliciously mild, like the finest April weather in England. A soft mist hung over the whole panorama round us, mellow- ing everything to a pecular spiritual beauty. The sun rose, and travelled through the day, and set, behind a veil of haze, through which it showed like a great crate of glowing embers. As it rose, the haze reddened higher and higher up the sky, till, at noon, the heavens were like the hollow of a vast half-transparent rose, shutting out the blue. It was like the dreamy days of Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence,' where everything invited to repose. You could look at the sun at any hour, and yet the view around was not destroyed, but rather made more lovely. What the cause of this phenomenon may be I have never been able to find out. One \\Titer suggests one thing, and another something else ; but it seems as if nobody knew the true reason of it. If I might venture a guess, I would say that perhaps it arises from the condensation of the Indian Summer, 103 vapours of the earth by the first frosts, while the summer and autumn heats are yet great enough in the soil to cause them to rise in abundance. Both before and after the Indian summer the first unmistakeuble heralds of winter visited us, in the shape of morning hoar-frost, which melted away as the day advanced. It was wonderfully beautiful to look at it, in its effects on the infinitely-varied colours of the leaves which still clung to the trees. Its silver dust, powdered over the golden yellow of some, and the bright-red, or dark-brown, or green of others, the minutest outline of each preserved, looked charming in the extreme. Then, not only the leaves, but the trunks, and branches, and lightest spra)'s, were crusted with the same snowy film, till, as far as the eye could reach, it seemed as if some magical transformation had happened in the night, and a mockery of nature had been moulded in white. But what shall I say of the scene when the sun came up in the east, to have his look at it as well as we ? What rainbow tints of every possible shade ! what diamond sparkling of millions of crystals at once ! It was like the gardens of Aladdin, with the trees bending under their wealth of rubies, and sapphires, and all things precious. But the spectacle was as short-lived as it was lovely. By noon, the last trace wac gone. The autumnal rains are of great value to the farmers and the country generally, by filling the wells and natural reservoirs, so as to secure a plentiful supply of 1 A \-' % 1 04 The Fall Rains and l/ie Roads. \ ' N! ! water for winter, and thus they were welcome enough on this ground to most, though we, with the river at hand, could have very well done without them. But, in their effects on the roads, they were a cause of grief to all alike. Except near towns, the roads all through Canada were, in those days, what most of them are, even yet, only mud ; and hence you may judge their state after long-continued tropical rains. All I. have said of our journey to the river in the early summer might be repeated of each returning fall. Men came to the house every day or two to borrow an axe or an auger, to extemporize some repair of their broken-down waggons or vehicles. One pitchy night I came upon two who were intensely busy, by the light of a lantern, mending a waggon, with the help of a saw, an auger, an axe, and a rope. Of course, I stopped to offer assistance, but I had come only in time to be too late, and was answered- that my help was not wanted. 'All's right — there's no use making a fuss — ^Jim, take back them things where you got them, and let's go a-head.' As to thanks for my offer, it would have been extravagant to expect them. They had cobbled their vehicle, and, on Jim's return, were off into the darkness as coolly as if nothing had happened. The dangers of the roads are a regular part of the calculations of the back-country Canadians, to encounter which they carry an axe, a wrench, and a piece of rope, which are generally enough for the rude wheelwright surgery required. It is amusing to 11' The Fall Rains and the Roads. 1 05 hear with what perfect indifference they treat mis- adventures which would totally disconcert an Old Countryman. I remember a man whom I met patch- ing up his light waggon — which is the name for a four-wheeled gig — setting me laughing at his account of his triumphs over all the accidents of travel. * I never was stopped yet/ he went on to assure me. • Once I was in my buggy and the tire of one of the wheels came off without my noticing ; I ran back some miles to try if I could get it, but I couldn't find it. But I guess I never say die, so I took a rail and stuck it in below the lame corner, and I tell you we made the dust fly ! ' A little brick church had been built about two miles from us, some time before we came to the river, but the mud was a sore hindrance to such of the congre- gation as could not come by water. Any attempt at week-night meetings of any kind was, of course, out of the question. We were pretty nearly close prisoners till the frost should come to relieve us. As in many other cases, however, this first step towards cure was almost worse than the disease. The frost often came in bitter fierceness for some time before any snow fell, and, then, who shall sing in sad enough strains the state of the roads ? Imagine mile after mile of mud, first poached into a long honey- comb by the oxen and horses, and cut into longitu- dinal holes by the wheels, then frozen, in this state, in a night, into stone, I once had to ride nearly sixty I. l! : \i ■i' It it 1 06 The Fall Rains and the Roads. Hn i I miles over such a set of pitfalls. My brother, Frederic, was with me, but he had slipped in the stable and sprained his shoulder so that I had almost to lift him into the saddle. He came with me to lead back my horse at the sixty miles' end, where the roads per- mitted the stage to run for my further journey. We were two days on the way, and such days. The ther- mometer was below zero, our breath froze on our eye- lashes every minute, and the horses had long icicles at their noses, and yet we could only stumble on at a slow walk, the horses picking their steps with the greatest difficulty, and every now and then coming down almost on their knees. Sometimes we got so cold we had to get off and walk with the bridles on our arms ; and then there was the getting Frederic mounted again. I thought we should never get to the end of the first day's ride. It got dark long before we reached it, and we were afraid to sit any longer on the horses, so that we finished it by groping in the pitchy darkness, as well as we could, for some miles. The first snow fell in November, and lay, that year, from that time until April. The climate has become much milder since, from the great extent of the clear- ings, I suppose, so that snow does not lie, now-a-days, as it did then, and does not begin for nearly a month later. I have often heard Canadians deploring the change in this respect, as, indeed, they well may in the rougher parts of the country, for the winter snow, by filling up the holes in the roads and freezing the wet The First Snow. 107 -? • r places;, as well as by its smooth surface, enables them to bring heavy loads of all kinds to market, from places which are wholly shut up at other seasons, if they had the leisure to employ in that way, at any other, which they have not. The snow is consequently as welcome in Canada as the summer is elsewhere, and a deficiency of it is a heavy loss. When we first setded, the quantity that fell was often very great, and as none melted, except during the periodical thaw in January, the accumulation became quite formidable by spring. It was never so bad, however, by any means, as at Quebec, where the houses have flights of steps up to the doors to let folks always get in and out through the vinter, the doors being put at high snow-mark, if I may so speak. I have sometimes seen the stumps quite hidden and the fences dwarfed to a very Lilliputian height ; but, of late years, there have been some winters when there has hardly been enough to cover the ground, and the wheat has in many parts been killed, to a large extent, by the frost and thaws, which it cannot stand when uncovered. People in Britain often make great mistakes about the appearance of Canada in winter, thinking, as I re- member we did, that we should have almost to get down to our houses through the snow for months together. The whole depth may often, now-a-days, in the open country, be measured by inches, though it still keeps up its old glory in the bush, and lies for months together, instead of melting off in a few days. 1 : H\ • i I t^ ..;[ '■ ( . T, ' uH ■ Mil 1 Li io8 Canada in Winter, as it very frequently do' s, round the towns and cities. I remember an account of the Canadian cHmate given by a very witty man, now dead, Dr Dunlop, of Lake Huron, as the report sent home respecting it by an Englishman to his friends, whom he informed, that for four months in the year you were up to the neck in mud ; for four more, you were either burned up by the heat or stung to death by mosquitoes, and, for. the other four, if you managed to get your nose above the snow it was only to have it bitten off by tlie frost. All the evils thus arrayed are bad enougli, but the writer's humour joined with his imagination in making an outrageous caricature when he spoke thus. A Frenchman, writing about England, would, perhaps, say as much against its climate, and, perhaps, with a nearer approach to truth. I remember travel- ling with one in the railway from Wolverhampton to London on a very bad day in winter, whose opinion of the English climate was, * cleemate, it's no clee- mate — it's only yellow fogue.' Robert Southey, as true an Englishman as ever lived, in the delightful letters published in his Life, constantly abuses it in a most extraordinary way, and I suppose there are others who abuse that of every o^^her country in which they chance to live. We can have nothing just as we would like it, and must always set the bright side over against the dark. For my part, 1 think that, though Canada has its charms at some seasons, and redeeming points in all, there is no place Climate m America, 109 like dear Old England, in spite of its fogs and drizzle, and the colds they bring in their train. The question often rises respecting the climate in America, since it has grown so much milder in com- paratively few years, whether it will ever grow any- lliing like our own in its range of cold and heat. That many countries have changed greatly within historical periods is certain. The climate of England, in the days of the Norman conquest, is thought by. many to have been like that of Canada now. Horace hints at ice and snow being no strangers at Rome in the time of Augustus. Ctesar led his army over the frozen Rhone; and, as to Germany, the description of its climate in Tacitus is fit to make one shiver. But we have, unfortunately, an opportunity afforded us by the case of New England, of seeing that two hundred years' occupation of an American province, though it may lessen the quantity of snow, has no effect in tempering the severity of the cold in winter, or abating the heat in summer. Connecticut and Massachusetts are as cold as Canada, if not colder, and yet they are long-settled countries. The great icy continent to the north forbids the hope of Canada ever being, in any strict sense of the term, temperate. Even in the open prairies of Wisconsin and Iowa the blasts that sweep from the awful Arctic deserts are keen beyond the conception of those who never felt them. It is the fact of Britain being an island that has made the change in its case, the wind that blows . If I'l f • f \ \ ^ '*'! '" ■' i ■ i'i il .■' 1' \ H ^^ ' ' B ' ^^ 1 H ^ n rfi \ );H A { no A Winter Landscape, ■ !) ^; fl I. over the sea being always much cooler in summer and warmer in winter than that which blows over land. I have spoken of the beautiful effect of the hoar- frost on the forest ; that of the snow is equally striking. It is wonderful how much manages to get itself heaped up on the broad branches of pines and cedars, and even on tjie bare limbs and twigs of other trees, making the landscape look most amazingly wintry. But I don't think any one in Canada ever heard of such a quantity lodging on them as to make such an occur- rence as Mrs Mary Somerville quotes from some traveller in her ' Physical Geography,' where she tells us that the weight of it on the broad fronds of the pine-trees is so great, that, when the wind rises and sways them to and fro, they often tumble against each other with such force as to overthrow great numbers, over large tracts of country. Such ' ice-storms,' as she calls them, I never heard of, nor did I ever meet with any one who did. Indeed, I rather think them im- possible, from the mere fact that, though the force with which the first tree struck the second might be enough to throw /V down, that of the second would be much weaker on a third, and thus the destruction would cease almost at once, instead of spreading far and wide. It must be some curious and incorrect version of the terrible tornadoes of summer which she has quoted. The snow itself used to give me constant pleasure in looking at it minutely. The beautiful shapes you Snow Crystals, III see in the kaleidoscope are not more wonderful than those of the crystals of which it was made up. Stars, crosses, diamonds, and I know not what other shapes, as large almost as a shilling, shone round you in mil- lions when the sun sent his glittering light on them, except in very cold weather, for then the snow was only a dry powder. What a wonderful thing crystalliza- tion is ! If you think of it for a moment you will be amazed and awed, for it brings us as if face to face with God. How is it that the particles of snow range themselves in the most perfect forms, far more beau- tifully than any jeweller could make the most costly ornament ? There is never an error — never anything like a failure. ' Every atom of the dead, cold snow has a law impressed on it by God, by which it takes its proper place in building up those fairy spangles and jewels. Can anything be more exquisite than the crystals we find in the rocks ? Yet they are built up of atoms too small for even the microscope to detect, and are always exactly the same shape in the same kind of crystal. Philosophers think that the particles of each kind of crystal have each the per feet shape which the whole crystal assumes; but if this be so, it makes the matter still more wonderful, for what shall we think of atoms, which no magnifying power can make visible, being carved and pierced and fretted into the most lovely shapes and patterns ? The great power of God is, I think, shown even more wonderfully in the smallest than in the largest of His i i! IW 112 MimUe Perfection of God's Works. \ f works. The miracles of His creative skill are lavished almost more profusely on its least than on its larger productions, in animate as well as inanimate nature. The crystalline lens of a cod's eye — that is, the central hnrrl part of it, which is a very little larger than a pea, and is quite transparent — was long thought to have no special wonders in its structure ; but the microscope has shown latterly that what appeared a mere piece of hard * jelly is made up of five millions of distinct fibres, which are locked into each other by sixty-two thousand millions of teeth ! The grasshopper has two hundred and seventy horny teeth, set in rows in its gizzard. A quarto volume has been ^vritten on the anatomy of the earth-worm. At Bilin, in Hun- gary, there is a kind of stone which the great micro- scopist — or histologist, as the phrase sometimes is — Dr Ehrenberg, has found to consist, nearly altogether, of creatures so small that three hundred and thirty millions of them make a piece only about twice the size of one of the dice used in backgammon, and yet each of these creatures is covered with a coat of mail delicately carved all over. What can be more lovely than the way in which the little feathers are laid on a butterfly's wing in such chgrming spots and bars of different colours ? I was looking some time since at a butter^ , which was of the most perfect azure blue when you looked down on it, but changed, when you saw it sideways, from one shade to another, and asked an entomologist how it was it had so many different Miiuitc Perfection of GocTs Works. \ 13 tints., taking nearly every colour by turns. It is by the wonderful arrangement of the feathers, it seems, all this is clone, the way in which they are laid on the wings being such as to break the rays of light into' all these colours, according to the angle at which it is held to the eye. How wonderful the Being whose very smallest works are so perfect ! The snow in cold countries is very different in appearance at different times, as I have already in- timated. In comparatively mild weather it falls and lies in large soft flakes ; but in very cold weather it comes down almost in powder, and crackles below the feet at each step. The first showers seldom lie, the air being too warm as yet ; indeed, warm, comfort- able days sometimes continue quite late. I re- member one November when we were without fires, even in the middle of it, for some days together ; and in one extraordinary December, ploughs were actually going on Christmas-day; but this was as great a wonder as a Canadian frost would be in England. The first winter, enough fell in November to cover all the stumps in our field, which we did not see again for many weeks. The depth of the snow must thus have been at least a yard. In the woods, there was only a dead level of snow, instead of the rough flooring of fallen logs and broken branches. At first we could not stir through it for the depth, and had to make a path to the barn and to the road ; but after a time a thaw came for a day or so^ and 8 '1 111 Is il'' :»» i 114 Dccr-shooting. some rain fell, and then the surface of the snow froze so firmly that even the oxen could walk over it in any direction without breaking through. The falling of the snow was a great time for the sportsmen of our household, for the deer were then most easily killed, the snow, while soft, showing their tracks, and also making them less timid, by forcing them to seek far and near for their food. Our rifles were, consequently, put in the best order as soon as the ground was white ; and each of us saw, in im- agination, whole herds of stags which he had brought down. Frederic, who had been left in Toronto, hav- ing suffered in health by the confinement of his office, had given it up, and had joined us some time before this, so that there were now five of us, besides my two sisters. We had three rifles and one gun, the rifle which David carried being an especially good one. But he was the poorest shot of us all, and Robert was too nervous to be sure of his aim ; but Henry was as cool before a stag as if it had been a rabbit. We were all in a state of great eagerness to commence, and had already looked out white clothes to put on over our ordinary suit, that we might be more like the snow; an extra supply of bullets and powder had been put into our pouches and flasks ; and we had pestered every one, for weeks before, with every possible question as to what we were to do when we set out. On the eventful day, my brothers, Robert, Henry, and David, got Dccr-sJiooiiiig. 115 their rifles on their shoulders immediately after breakfast, and, having determined on taking each a different road, struck into the woods as each thought best. Shortly before dark we heard David's voice in the clearing, and, soon after, Robert and Henry made their appearance. "We were all out in a moment to see what they had got, but found them by no means disposed to be talkative about their adventures. We gradually learned, however, that they had all had a hard day's trudge through the rough wearisome woods, and that Robert had had one good chance through the day, but was so flus*- tered when the deer sprang away through the trees that he could not raise his rifle in time, and had fired rather at where it had been than at where it was. David declared that he had walked forty miles, he supposed, and had seen nothing, though if he had only seen as much as a buck's tail he was sure he would have brought it down. Henry said that, do his best, he could not get near enough, what with the wind and the crackling of something or other. The fact was that they were raw hands, and needed some training, and had had to suffer the usual penalty of over-confidence, in reaping only disappointment. They felt this indeed so much, that it was some time before they would venture out alone again, preferring to accompany an old hunter who lived near us, until they had caught the art from him. Henry went out with an Indian, also, f ( ; I n ii6 Deer-shooting, once, and thus gradually became able to manage by himself. He had the honour of killing the first deer, and setting up the trophy of its horns. He had walked for hours, thinking every little while he saw something through the trees, but had been disap- pointed, until towards midday, when, at last, he came upon a couple browsing on the tender tips of the brush, at a long distance from him. Then came the hardest part of the day's work, to get within shot of them without letting them hear or smell him. He had to dodge from tree to tree, and would look out every minute to see if they were still there. Several times the buck pricked its ears, and looked all round it, as if about to run off, making him almost hold his breath Avith anxiety lest it should do so ; but, at last, he got near enough, and taking a good aim at it from behind a tree, drew the trigger. A spring forward, and a visible momentary quiver, showed that he had hit it ; but it did not immediately fall, but ran off with the other through the woods. Instantly dashing out to the spot where it had stood, Henry followed its track, aided by the blood which every here and there lay on the snow. He thought at first he would come up with it in a few hundred yards, but it led him a long weary chase of nearly two miles before he got within sight of it. It had continued to run until weakness from the loss of blood had overpowered it, and it lay quite dead when Henry reached it. It was too great a weight for him to think of carrying home '" <"'^>.>< ^■^Ml&MS ";.-.i^ ^^i^ ^} ^ ^-.io^A ^•■■.- •. 1 JA; II » li ' .f ■ •■S-K- ',-■. t. . ■f ■_^ .>'.>^^" i''^'( ',f'/ ;■/ . ^^kB^^ I ■■'t . ^ i'; v'f'ic^*';'- '%>■ A ^Pl ' '^A ' --'i'' . '^ir v,^ '^^ " ~^^-'^ H^^^ \ " r_ •([■.■ ',\ •/ ■ ' \ -• . ■' • >^ ii /,' \|-- ^ _-*=^ '. .'•;■ \ -N 2 - « -_ "^ "' \ \ ' ■ \ ', HP.NRYS FIRST STAG. Vage iiO. 11 1; ii i :■ •1»V .r^hM-b- > kuV, ■ X If " // ^''i (' Dccr-shooiing. "7 himself, so that he determined to cut it up, and hang the pieces on the neighbouring branches till he could come back next morning with some of us and fetch them. Copying the example of the old hunter whom he had made his model, he had taken a long knife and a small axe with him; and, after cutting the throat to let off what blood still remained, the creature being still warm, he was not very long of stripping it of its skin and hanging up its dismembered body, for preservation from the wolves through the night. This done, he made the best of his way home to tell us his achievement. Next day, we had a grand banquet on venison- steaks, fried with ham, and potatoes in abundance ; and a better dish I think I never tasted. Venison pie, and soup, for days after, furnished quite a treat in the house. A few days after this, while the winter was hardly as yet fairly begun, David and Henry had gone out to their work on the edge of the woods, when a deer, feeding close to them, lifted up its head, and, looking at them, turned slowly away. They were back to the house in a moment for their rifles, and sallied forth after it, following its track to the edge of the creek on our lot, where it had evidently crossed on the ice. David reached the bank first ; and, naturally enough, thinking that ice which bore up a large deer would bear him up, stepped on it to continue the pursuit But he had forgotten that the deer had m \% 'f^ I '"% ii8 Deer-shooting. HI four legs, and thus pressed comparatively little on any one part, whereas his whole weight was on one spot, and he had only reached the middle when in he went, in a moment, up to his middle in the freezing water. The ducking was quite enough to cool his ardour for that day, so that we had him back to change his clothes as soon as he could get out of his bath and reach the house. Henry got over the stream on a log, and followed the track for some dis- tance farther, but gave up the chase on finding it- likely to be unavailing. When we first came to live on the river, the deer were very numerous. One day in the first winter Robert saw a whole herd of them, of some eight or ten, feeding close to the house, among our cattle, on some browse which had been felled for them. Browse, I may say, is the Canadian word for the tender twigs of trees, which are so much liked by the oxen and cows, and even by the horses, that we used to cut down a number of trees, and leave them with the branches on them, for the benefit of our four-footed retainers. On seeing so grand a chance of bagging two deer at a shot, Robert rushed in for his rifle at once, but before he had got it loaded, although he flustered through the process with incredible haste, and had us all riuniing to bring him powder, ball, and wadding, the prey had scented danger, and were gone. We had quite an excitement one day by the cry Dccr-shooting. 11^ Ft "^ ntinued persecution, by every one, at all seasons, has nearly banished the deer from all the settled parts of Canada, for years back. There are game laws now, however, fixing a time, within which, to destroy them is punishable, and it is to be hoped they may do some good. But the rifle is of use only for amusement in all the older districts, and if you Useless Cruelty. 121 want to get sport like that of old times you must go to the frontier townships, where everything is yet almost in a state of nature. The Indians were harder on every kind of game, and still are so, than even the white settlers. They liave long ago laid aside the bow and arrow of their ancestors, in every part of Canada, and availed them- selves of the more deadly power of firearms. As they have nothing whatever to do most of their time, and as the flesh of deer is, at once, food, and a means of getting other things, by bartering it for them, and as it suits their natural taste, they used to be, and still are, what may be called hunters by profession. One Indian and his son, who had built their wigAvam on our lot, in the first years of our setdement, killed in one winter, in about three weeks, no fewer than forty deer, but they spoiled everything for the rest f'f ^he season, as those that escaped them became so > i^ied that they fled to some other part. T}- , species of deer common in Canada is the Vir- giniuji, and, though not so large as some others, their long, open ears, and graceful tails — longer than those of some other kinds, and inclining to be bushy — give them a very attractive appearance. The most curious thing about them, as about other deer, was the growth and casting of the stags* horns. It is not till the . pr'ng of the second year that the first pair begin to make their appearance, the first sign of their coming being a swelling of the skin over the spots from 122 Shedding of the Stags Horns. which they are to rise. The antlers are now bud- ding; for on these spots are the footstalks from which they are to spring, and the arteries are beginning to deposit on them, particle by particle, with great ra- pidity, the bony matter of which the horns are com- posed. As the antlers grow, the skin still stretches over , them, and ■ > utinues to do so, till they have reached their full s. nd have become quite hard and solid, and forms a beautiful velvet covering, which is, in reality, underneath, nothing but a great tissue of blood-vessels for supplying the necessary circulation. The arteries which run up from the head, through it, are, meanwhile, so large, that they make furrows on the soft horns underneath; and it is these that leave the deeper marks on the horns when hard. When the antlers are full-grown they look very curious while the velvet is still over them, and are so tender that the deer can, as yet, make no use of them. It must therefore be removed, but not too suddenly, lest the quantity of blood flowing through such an extent of skin should be turned to the brain or some internal organ, and death be the result. Danger is prevented, and the end at the same time accomplished, by a rough ring of bone being now deposited round the base of the horns where they join the footstalk, notches being left in it, through which the arteries still pass. Gradually, however, these openings are contracted by fresh bone being formed round their edges, till at length the Shedding of the Slags Ilonis. 1 23 arteries are compressed as by a ligature, and the cir- culation effectually stopped. The velvet now dies, for want of the vital fluid, and peels off, the deer helping to get it off by rubbing its horns against the trees. It was by noticing this process of stopping the arteries in the antlers of stags, that John Hunter, the great anatomist, first conceived the plan of re- ducing the great swellings of the arteries in human beings which are called aneurisms, by tying them up — a mode which, in certain cases, is found quite effectual. The highest thoughts of genius are thus frequently only new applications of principles and modes of operation which God has established in the humblest orders of nature, from the beginning of the world. Indeed they are always so, for we cannot create any absolutely new conception, but must be contented to read and apply wisely the teachings furnished by all things around us. When the velvet is gone, the horns are at last perfect, and the stag bears them proudly, and uses them fiercely in his battles with his rivals. But the cutting off the arte- ries makes them no longer a part of the general sys- tem of the animal. They are, thenceforth, only, held on to the footstalks by their having grown from them, and, hence, each spring, when a new pair begin to swell up from beneath, the old ones are pushed off and fall away, to make room for others. It is curious to think that such great things as full-grown stags' horns drop off and are renewed every year ; but so 1; i i :-ii ; n ■J ( V li. ! I I I' i 1 24 Shedding of the Stag's Horns. it is. Beginning with the single horn of the first season, they grow so much larger each season till the seventh, when they reach their greatest size. But, after all, is it any more wonderful that their horns should grow once a-year, than that our hair should grow all the time? And is a horn anything more than hair stuck together ? 115 IS s 3 l? CHAPTER VII. Wolves — My adventure with a bear — Courtenay's cow and the wolves — A fright in the woods by night — The river freezes —Our winter fires— Cold, cold, cold !— A winter's journey — Sleighing — Winter mufilings — Accidents through intense cold. HE wolves used to favour us by howling at nights, close at hand, till the sound made one miserable. We had five sheep destroyed in the barn-yard on one of these occasions, nothing being done to them beyond tearing the throats open and drinking the blood. Perhaps the wolves had been disturbed at their feast. I never heard of any one being killed by them, but they sometimes put benighted travellers in danger. One night, Henry was coming home from a neighbour's, in the bright moonlight, and had almost reached our clearing, when, to his horror, he heard the cry of some wolves behind him, and, feeling sure they wished to make their supper at his expense, he made off, with the fastest heels he could, to a tree that stood by itself, and was easily climbed. Into this he got just in time to save himself, for the wolves were already at the foot of it, when he had made good his seat across a bough. H I f <• w 'm r' i 126 Wolves. The night was fearfully cold, and he must soon have frozen to death had he not, providentially, been so near the house. As it was, his loud whistling for the dogs, and his shouts, were, fortunately, heard, and some of us sallying out, he was delivered from his perilous position. Wolves are much scarcer now, however, I am thankful to say, owing in part, no doubtj to a reward of two sovereigns which is offered by Government for every head brought in. In the regions north of Canada they seem to abound, and even on the shores of the Arctic Ocean they are found in great numbers. Sir John Franklin, in one of his earlier journeys, often came upon the remains of deer which had been hemmed in by them and driven over precipices. * Whilst the deer are quietly grazing,' says he, 'the wolves assemble in great numbers, and, forming a deep crescent, creep slowly towards the herd, so as not to alarm them much at first; but when they perceive that they have fairly hemmed in the unsuspecting creatures, and cut off their retreat across the plain, they move more quickly, and with hideous yells terrify their prey and urge them to flight by the only open way, which is towards the precipice, appearing to know that when the herd is at full speed it is easily driven over the cliffs, the rear-most urging on those that are before. The wolves then descend at leisure and feed on the mangled carcasses.' . There were some bears in the woods, but they P^.V - n. Cotirienays Cow and the Wolves, iiy did not trouble us. My sister Margaret and I were the only two of our family who had an adventure with one, and that ended in a fright. It was in the summer-time, and we had strolled out into the woods to amuse ourselves with picking the wild berries, and gathering flowers. I had climbed to the top of the upturned root of a tree, the earth on which was thick mth fruit, and my sister was at a short dis- tance behind. Having just got up, I chanced to turn round and look down, when, lo ! //lerc stood' a bear busy at the raspberries, which he seemed to like as much as we did. You may be certain that the first sight of it was enough. I sprang down in an instant, and, shouting to my sister that there was a bear behind the tree, we, both, made off homewards with a speed which astonished even ourselves. The poor brute never offered to disturb us, though he might have made a meal of either of us had he chosen, for I don't think we could have run had we seen him really after us. I had forgotten a story about the wolves which happened a year or two after our first settling. John Courtenay had a cow which fell sick, and was lying in the field, after night, in the winter-time, very likely without any one missing it, or, if they missed it, without their knowing where to find it in the dark. The wolves, however, did not overlook it, for, next morning, poor Cowslip was found killed by them, and its carcass having been left, the family not liking to use .i'« J I 128 A Fright in the Woods by Night. it under the circumstances, they held high carnival over it, night after night, till the bones were picked clean. This happened quite close to the house. But if there were not many bears and wolves to be seen^ we were not the less afraid they would pounce on us, when, by any chance, we should happen to be coming through the woods after dark. I remember a young friend and myself being half friglitened in this way one summer evening when there chanced to be no moon, and we had to walk home, through the great gloomy forest, when it was pitch dark. Before starting, we were furnished with a number of long slips of the bark of the hickory- tree, which is very inflammable, and, having each lighted one, we sallied out on our journey. I shall never forget the wild look of everything in the flickering light, the circle of darkness closing in round us at a very short distance. But on we went, along the winding path, hither and thither, among the trees. Suddenly an unearthly sound broke from one side, a sort of screech, which was repeated again and again. We took it for granted some bear and her young ones were at hand, but, where, it seemed impossible for us to discover. How could we run in such darkness over such a path, with lights to carry? Both of us stood still to listen. Again came the *hoo, hoo, hoo;' and I assure you it sounded very loud in the still forest. But, though terrible to me, I noticed that, when distinctly caught. The River Freezes. 129 it ceased to alarm my comrade. ' It's only a great owl up in the tree there — what's the use of being frightened ? * he broke out ; yet he had been as much so as myself, the moment before. However, we now made up for our panic by a hearty laugh, and went on in quietness to the house. Towards the end of December the river froze. This was, in great part, caused by large blocks of ice floating down from Lake Superior, and getting caught on the banks, as they went past, by the ice already formed there. For one to touch another, was to make them adhere for the rest of the winter, and, thus, in a very short time after it had begun, the whole surface was as solid as a stone. We had now to cut a hole every morning with the axe, through the ice, to let the cattle drink, and to get water for the house, and cold work it was. The cattle came down themselves, but when, a year or two afterwards, we got horses, they had to be led twice a day. It was very often my task to take them. Riding was out of the question, from the steepness of the bank, and the way in which their feet balled with the snow, so I used to sally out for them in a thick great-coat, with the ears of my cap carefully tied down, to prevent frostbites; a thick worsted cravat round my neck, and thick mitts on my hands. The floor of the stable was, invariably, a sheet of ice, and over this I had to get out the two horses, letting the one out over the icy slope at the^ 9 3 •. 5 ■ .«■;. 1' 1: 1; 1'^? 130 Our Winter Fires. W door, and then holding the halter till the second one had slid past me, when, having closed the door, with hands like the snow, from having had to loosen the halters, I went down with them. A\Tien the wind was from the north they were white in a step or two, with their breath frozen on their chests and sides, the cold making it like smoke as it left their nostrils. Of course they were in no hurry, and would put their tails to the wind and drink a minute, and then lift up their heads and look round them at their leisure, as if it were June. By the time they were done, their mouths and chins were often coated with ice, long icicles hanging from the hair all round. Right glad was I when at last I had them fairly back again, and had knocked out the balls of snow from their shoes, to let them stand firm. The cold did not last all the time, else we could never have endured it. There would be two or three days of hard frost, and then it would come milder for two or three more : but the mildest, except when it was a thaw, in January, were very much colder than any that are common in England, and as to the coldest, what sliall I say they were like? The sky was as bright and clear as can be imagined, the snow crackled under foot, and the wind, when there was any, cut the skin like a razor. Indoors, the fire in the kitchen was enough to heat a large hall in a more temperate climate. It was never l^--l. '►'-- Cold, cold, cold ! 131 allowed to go out, the last thing at night being to roll a huge back-log, as they called it, into the fire- place, with hand-spokes, two of us sometimes having to help to get it into its place. It was simply a cut of a tree, about four feet long, and of various thick- nesses. The two dog-irons having been drawn out, and the embers heaped close to this giant, a number of thinner logs, whole and in parts, were then laid above them, and the fire was * gathered ' for the night. By day, what with another huge back-log' to replace the one burned up in the night, and a great bank of other smaller 'sticks' in fron: and over it, I think there was often half a cart-load blazing at a time. In fact, the only measure of the quantity was the size of the huge chimney, for the wood cost nothing except the trouble of cutting and bringing it to the house. It was grand to sit at night before the roaring mountain of fire and forget the cold outside ; but it was a frightful thing to dress in the morning, in the bitter cold of the bed-rooms, with the windows thick with frost, and the water frozen solid at your side. If you touched a tumbler of water with your tooth- brush it would often freeze in a moment, and the water in the basin sometimes froze round the edges while we were washing. The tears would come out of our eyes, and freeze on our cheeks as they rolled down. The towels were regularly frozen like a board, if they had been at all damp. Water, brought in over- night in buckets, and put as close to the fire as \ ■v* m U f5 M 132 Cold^ cold, cold ! 4 1'» possible, had to be broken with an axe in the morning. The bread, for long after we went to the river, till we got a new house, was like a stone for hardness, and sparkled with the ice in it. The milk froze on the way from the barn to the house, and even while they were milking. If you went out, your eyelashes froze together every moment with your breath on them, and my brothers* whiskers were always white with frozen breath when they came in. Beef and everything of the kind, were frozen solid for months together, and, when a piece was wanted, it had to be sawn off and put in cold water overnight to thaw it, or hung up in the house. I have known beef that had been on for hours taken out almost raw, from not having been thawed beforehand. One of the coldest nights I remember happened once when I was from home. I was to sleep at the house of a magistrate in the village, and had gone with a minister who was travelling for the British and Foreign Bible Society to attend a meeting he had appointed. It was held in a wooden schoolhouse, with three windows on each side, and a single storey high. There was a stove at the end nearest the door which opened into the room ; the pipe of it was carried up to near the roof, and then led along the room to a chimney at the opposite end. The audience consisted of seven or eight men and boys, though the night was magnificent, the stars hanging from the dark blue like sparkling globes of light. The cold, in fact, was so intense that nobody would venture out. When I got in, I found Cold^ cold, cold ! ^^?> the congregation huddled round the stove, which one of them, seated in front of it, was assiduously stuffing with wood, as often as the smallest chance offered of his being able to add to its contents. The stove itself was as red as the fire inside of it, and the pipe, for more than a yard up, was the same ; but our backs were wretchedly cold, notwithstanding^, though we sat within a few inches of the glowing iron. As to the windows, the rime on them never thought of melting, but lay thick and hard as ever. How the unfortunate speaker bore his place at the master's desk at the far end I know not. He had only one arm, indeed, but the hand of the other was kept deeply bedded in his pocket all the time. We were both to sleep at the same house, and therefore returned together, and after supper were shown into a double-bedded room with a painted floor, and a great stove in the middle. A delightful Toar up the pipe promised comfort for the night, but alas ! in a few minutes it died away, the fire having been made of chips instead of sub- stantial billets. Next morning on waking, looking over to Mr Thompson, I expressed a hope that he had rested well through the night. * Rested ! ' said he ; 'I thawed a piece my own size last night when I first got in, and have lain in it all night as if it had been my coffin. I daren't put out my leg or my hand ; it was like ice up to my body.' One winter I had a dreadful journey of about two ir 134 A Winter^ s yourney. \ % \ \ \ hundred miles. We started in the stage, which was an open rough waggon, at seven o'clock at night, the roads not as yet permitting sleighs. It was in the first week of January. I had on tAVO great-coats, but there were no buffalo robes to lay over the knees, though the stage should have provided them. All that dreadful dark night I had to sit there, while the horses stumbled on at a walk, and the waggon bumped on the frozen clods most dreadfully. The second day's ride was much better, that part of the road being smoother; but the next day and night — ^what shall I say of them? I began in a covered sleigh, some time in the forenoon, the distance being seventy miles. There was another person in it besides my- self. Off we started at a good pace, but such was the roughness of the road, up one wave of frozen earth and snow, and down another, that both of us were thoroughly sea-sick in a short time. Each took possession of a window, and getting the head in again was out of the question till the sickness fairly spent itself. Meanwhile, there was a large high wooden box in the sleigh between us, and we had to keep a hand a-piece on it, lest it should take us at unawares, and make a descent on our legs or backs. After a time, the covered sleigh was exchanged for an open one — a great heavy farmer's affair, a mere long box upon runners. To add to our troubles, they put a great black horse, as one of the two to draw us, which was so wild and fierce that I have always ^^^Su-i Sleighing, ^ZS thought it must have been mad. It was now dark night, and there were again no buffalo robes, and the thermometer far below zero. How we stood it I know not. My feet were like ice, and incessant motion of both them and my arms seemed all that could keep me from freezing. But away the black wretch tore, the driver pulling him back as he could, but in vain. At last, at two or three in the morning, bang went the sleigh against some stump, or huge lump of frozen mud, and — broke down. 'You'll have to get out, gentlemen,' said the driver. *You had better walk on to the first house, and I'll go before you and borrow a sleigh.' Here then we were, turned out to stumble over a chaos of holes and hillocks for nearly two miles, in darkness, and in such a night ! I don't know how long we were, but we reached a wayside inn at last, where the drivei >orrowed what he could get to carry us and the mails to the journey's end, and having gone back for the bags and his parcels, and that horrid box, to where he had left ihe broken vehicle at the roadside, he reappeared after a time, and we finished our journey, tired and cold enough, a little before daylight. The amount of suffering from the cold, seldom, however, reaches any painful extent ; indeed, you will hear people say, on every hand, that they posi- tively like it, except when it is stormy, or when the wind blows very keenly. Nor does it hinder work of any kind, where there is exercise enough. You ' i| ' (■' ',i I i if Winter Mufflings, may see men chopping in the forest in terribly cold days, with their jackets off, the swinging of the arms making them disagreeably hot in spite of the weather. Sleighing is, moreover, the great winter amusement of the Canadian, who seems never so pleased as when driving fast in a * cutter,' with the jingling bells on the horse's neck making music as it goes. But, for my part, 1 could never bear sitting with my face to the wind, while I was dragged through it at the rate of ten miles an hour, with the thermometer below zero. All the mufflings you can put on won't protect the cheeks or the eyes, and the hands get intolerably cold holding the reins. Indeed, the precautions taken by those who have much travelling about in winter show that, to those less fully prepared, there must be suffering as well as enjoyment. Our doctor's outfit for his winter practice used to amuse me. He had, first, a huge otter fur cap, with ears ; next, over his great-coat, the skin of a buffalo made into a coat, with the hairy side out, and reaching to his feet ; his feet were cased in mocassins, which came over his boots and tied round the ankles ; a pair of great hose reached up his thighs; his hands were muffled in huge fur gauntlets reaching half-way to his elbow ; and when he took his seat in his sleigh with all this wrapping, he sat down on a buffalo-skin spread over the seat, and stretching down over the bottom, vhile another was tucked in over him, his feet resting on the lower edge of it to keep out every breath of air ; Accidents through Intense Cold. 137 and, in addition, he always had hot bricks put inside on starting, and re-heated them every short while. No wonder he used to say that he felt quite comfort- able. He had clothes and furs enough on him for Greenland. In spite of all this, however, I remember his driving back, home, in great haste one day, with his wife and child, and found that the face of the infant had been partially frozen in a ride of four or hve miles. Cases of death from the excessive cold are not infrequent. A drunken man, falling on the road, is certain to die if not speedily found. A poor Indian was frozen to death on the river in this way a short time after we came. But even the most sober people are sometimes destroyed by the awful intensity of the cold. I knew a young widow who had lost her husband in this way. He had gone to town in his sleigh, one Christmas, on business, and was returning, when he felt very cold, and turned aside to heat himself at a farm-house. Poor fellow ! he was already so frozen that he died shortly after coming to the fire. This last winter, a farmer and his daughter were driving in from the country to Toronto, and, naturally enough, said little to ea^^h other, not caring to expose their faces; but when they had reached the city and should have alighted, to her horror the daughter found that her father was stone dead, frozen at her side by the way. At Christmas there are a great many shooting-matches, at which whoever kills most pigeons, let loose from a i ! Hi !! 138 Accidents through Intense Cold, %% \'A trap, at a certain distance, wins a turkey. I was one day riding past one of these, and noticed a group of spectators standing round, but thought no more of it, till, next morning, I learned that, when the match was done and the people dispersed, a boy was seen who continued to stand still on the vacant ground, and, on going up to him, it was found that he had been frozen stiff, and was stone dead. A minister once told me that he had been benighted on at lonely road in the depth of the winter and could get on no further, and, for a time, hardly knew what to do. At last he re- solved to take out his horse, and, after tying its two fore legs together, let it seek what it could for itself till morning, while he himself commenced walking round a great tree that was near, and continued doing so, without resting, till the next morning. Had he sat down, he would have fallen asleep ; and if he had slept, he would certainly have died. My brother Henry, who, after a time, turned to the study of me- dicine, and has risen to be a professor in one of the colleges, took me one day to the hospital with him, and, turning into one of the wards, walked up to the bed of a young man. Lifting up the bottom of the clothes, he told me to look ; and, — what a sight ! Both the feet had been frozen off at the ancle, and the red stumps were slowly healing. A poor man called, once, begging, whose fingers were all gone. He had walked some miles without gloves, and had known nothing about how to manage frozen .' V] Accidents through Intense Cold, 139 limbs ; his fingers had frozen, had been neglected, and had mortified, till at last such as did not drop off were pulled out, he told me, with pincers, being utterly rotten at the joints. I know a young man, a law student, whose fingers are mere bone and skin : he was snow- balling, and paid the penalty in the virtual destruction of his hands. A curious case happened some years ago, resulting in the recovery of t^vo thousand pounds of damages from the mail company. The stage from Montreal, westward, broke through an air-hole on the St Lawrence, when driving over the ice, and all the passengers were immersed in the river, one of them getting both his hands so frozen that he lost them entirely. They were both taken off at the wrists. The money was a poor consolation for such a ca- lamity. I have known of a gentleman losing both hands by taking off his fur gloves to get better con- trol over a runaway horse. He got it stopped, but his hands were lost in the doing it. The ice of the river used to give us abundant room for skating, where it was smooth enough. Near the towns every one skates, even the ladies, of late years, doing their best at it. But the ice, with us, was often too rough for this graceful and healthy exercise, so that it was less practised than it otherwise would have been. n X(i I r I40 n mamm^OB m • CHAPTER VIII. The aurora borealis — 'Jumpers' — Squaring" timber — Rafts — Camping out — A public meeting — Winter fashions — My toe frozen — A long winter's walk — Hospitality — Nearly lost in the woods. HE grandeur of the aurora borealis, in the cold weather, particularly struck us. At times the whole heavens would be irradi- ated by it — shafts of light stretching from every side to the zenith, or clouds of brightness, of the softest rose, shooting, from every point of the horizon, high overhead. It was like the Hindoo legend of Indra's palace, which Southey describes so beautifully : ' Even we on earth at intervals descry Gleams of the glory, streaks of flowing light, ■ Openings of Heaven, and streams that flash at night In fitful splendour, through the northern sky.' Curse 0/ JCehama, vii. 72. The fondness of almost every one for sleigh-riding was ludicrously shown in the contrivances invented in some cases to get the enjoyment of the luxury. The richer settlers, of course, had very comfortable * Jumpers! 141 vehicles, with nice light runners, and abundance of skins of various kinds, to adorn them, and make them warm ; but every one was not so fortunate, and yet all were determined that ride they would. * Have you anything to go in?' I have heard asked, once and again, with the answer, * No, but I guess we can rig up a jumper pretty soon.' This * jumper,' when it made its appearance, if it were of the most prim- itive type, consisted simply of two long poles, with the bark on them, the one end to drag on the ground, and the other to serve for shafts for the horse; a cross-bar here and there behind, let into them through auger-holes, serving to keep them together. An old box, fixed on roughly above, served for a body to the carriage ; and, then, off they went, scraping along the snow in a wonderful way. Instead of buffalo-robes, if they had none, a coloured bed- quilt, ^vrapped round them, served to keep them warm. An old wood-sleigh, with a box on it, was something more aristocratic; but anything that would merely hold them was made to pass muster. With plenty of trees at hand, and an axe and auger, a backwoods- man never thinks himself unprovided while the snow continues. It is in the winter that the great work of cutting and squaring timber, in the forests, for export to Europe, is done. Millions of acres, covered with the noblest trees, invite the industry of the wealthier merchants by the promise of liberal profit, along %^:; ) ; Ill i ?! if! Mi 142 Squaring Timber. the whole edge of Canada, towards the north, from the Ottawa to Lake Huron. What the quantity of timber this vast region contains must be, may be estimated in some measure from the report of the Crown Land Commissioner, a few years since, which says that, in the Ottawa district alone, there is enough to answer every demand for the next six hundred years, if they continue felling it at the present rate. There is no fear, assuredly, of wood running short in Canada for many a day. The rafts brought down from Lake Huron alone are won- derful— thousands on thousands of immense trees, squared so as to lie closely together, each long enough, apparently, to be a mast for a large vessel. I have looked over the wilderness of the forest from two points — the one, the limestone ridge that runs from Niagara northward — the other, from the top of the sand-hills on the edge of Lake Huron — and no words can tell the solemn grandeur of the prospect in either case. Far as the eye could reach there was nothing to be seen but woods — woods — ^woods — a great sea of verdure, with a billowy 'roll, as the trees varied in height, or the lights and shadows played on them. It is said that the open desert impresses the traveller with a sense of its sublimity that is almost overpowering — the awful loneliness, the vast, naked, and apparently boundless sweep of the hori- zon on every side, relieved by no life or motion, or even variety of outline, subduing all alike. Bui I Squaring Timber. ''^l question if the sight of an American forest be not equally sublime. The veil cast by the trees over the landscape they adorn; the dim wonder what may live beneath them, what waters flow, what lakes sparkle ; the consciousness that you look on nature in her own unprofaned retreats; that before a white man had seen these shores the summer had already waked this wondrous spectacle of life and beauty, year after year, for ages; the thoughts of mystery prompted by such * a boundless deep immensity -of shade ; ' the sense of vastness, inseparable from the thought that the circle of your horizon, which so overpowers you, sweeps on, in equal grandeur, over boundless regions — all these and other thoughts fill the mind with awe and tenderness. The district in which, chiefly, * lumber men,' strictly so called, ply their vocation, is on the Upper Ottawa, where vast tracts of pine and other trees are leased from Government by merchants in Quebec, Montreal, and elsewhere. For these gloomy regions vast numbers of lumberers set out from Kingston and Ottawa in the autumn, taking with them their winter's provision of pork, flour, &:c. ; and building 'shanties' for themselves — that is, rough huts, to live in through the long winter — as soon as they reach their limits. Intensely severe as the cold is, they do not care for it. Sleeping at nights with their feet to the fire, and * roughing * it by day as no labourers would think of doing in England, they .iti h 144 Rafts, keep up the highest spirits and the most vigorous health. To fell and square the trees is only part of their labour; they must also drag them over the snow to the river, by oxen, and join them into rafts after getting them ' to it. To form these, a large number of logs are laid closely, side by side, and lashed together by long, thin, supple rods tied round pins driven into them, and further secured by trarisverse poles pinned down on them ; and they are then floated as rafts towards the St La>vrence, which they gradually reach, after passing, by means of con- trivances called * slides,* over the rough places, where the channel is broken into rapids. As they go down, poling or sailing, or shooting the slides, their course is enlivened by the songs and shouts of the crew, and very exciting it is to see and hear them. Once in the broad, smooth water, several smaller rafts are often joined together, and everything carefully prepar- ed for finally setting out for the lower ports. Even from their starting, they are often rigged out with short masts and sails, and houses are built on them, in which the crew take up their abode during the voyage. When they are larger, quite a number of sails are raised, so that they form .very striking ob- jects, when slowly gliding down the river, a rude steering-apparatus behind guiding the vast con- struction.* * On the upper lakes, the crew often take their wives and children, with their poultry, &c., on the rafts with them. V Camping out. ^^h It is wonderful how men oland the exposure of the winter in the forests as they do. Indeed, a fine young fellow, a friend of mine, a surveyor, told me that he liked nothing better than to go off to the depths of the wilderness in the fall, and * camp out ' amidst the snows, night after night, till the spring thaws and the growth of the leaves forced an inter- mission of the work of his profession. An adventure that happened to a party who had, on one occasion, to travel some distance along a river-bed, in winter, is only a sample of what is continually met with beyond the settled parts of the country. There were seven or eight of them in all, including two half- breeds, whom they had employed, partly as guides, and partly to draw their slight luggage on hand- sleighs over the ice. The whole party had to wear snow-shoes to keep them from sinking into the soft snow, which had drifted, in many places, to a great depth; and this itself, except to experienced hands, is at once very exhausting and painful. The snow- bhoe is simply a large oval frame of light wood, crossed with a netting, on which the foot rests, and to which it is strapped, the extent of surface thus presented enabling the wearer to pass safely over drifts, in which, otherwise, he would at once sink. Starting at the first break of the dawn, they plodded on as well as they could, the ankles and knees of some of them getting more and more painful at every step with the weight of the great snow-shoes underneath lo :ru 'I \ Hie. fi ' 1 I .'•I fl 1 :; h: 1 ]. I i .! 146 Camping out. It was no use attempting to pick their steps in such a depth of snow, so that they had to take their chance of getting on some unsafe part of the ice at any moment. Meanwhile, the sky got darker and more lowering, until, at last, it broke into a snow-storm so heavy that they could hardly see one another at a few yards' distance. The wind, which was very strong, blew directly in their faces, and howled wildly through the trees on each side, whirling the drift in thick clouds in every direction. Still they held on as well as they could, in moody silence, till, at last, it was evident to all that they must give up the struggle, and make as good an encampment as they could, for the night, where they were. Turning aside, therefore, into the forest, where a dark stretch of pine-trees promised protection, they proceeded to get ready their resting-place. With the help of their axes, a maple was soon felled, and large pieces of bark, from the fallen trees around, formed shovels, by which a square spot of ground was cleared of the snow. A fire was the next great subject of interest, and this they obtained by rubbing some of the fibrous bark of the white cedar to powder, and lay- ing over it first thin peelings of birch-bark, and then the bark itself, a match sufficing to set the pile in a blaze, and the whole forest offering fuel. Piling log on log into a grand heap, the trees around were soon lighted up with a glow that shone far and near. To protect themselves from the snow, which was A Pudlic Meeting. H7 still falling, a quantity of spruce-boughs were next laid overhead on the rampart of snow which had been banked up round them to the height of nearly five feet, the cold of the day being so great that the fierce fire blazing close at hand made no impression on it whatever. Slices of salt pork, toasted on a stick at the fire, having been got ready by some, and broth, cooked in a saucepan, by others, they now took their comfort as best they could in a primitive supper, logs round the fire serving for seats. After this came their tobacco-pipes and a long smoke, and then each of the party lay down with his feet to the fire, and slept, covered with snow, till daylight next morning. This is the life led, week after week, by those whose avocations call them to frequent the forests during winter ; nor are the comforts of some of the poorer settlers in new districts, wLile they live in 'shanties,' at their first coming, much greater, nor their exposure much less. A public meeting, held in the next township, gave us an opportunity of seeing the population of a wide district in all the variety of winter costume. We went in a neighbour's sleigh, drawn by a couple of rough horses, whose harness, licvi here and there with rope, and unprovided with anything to keep the traces from falling down, or the sleigh from running on the horses' heels, looked as unsafe as possible. But Canadian horses know how to act under such circumstances, as if they had studied them, and ha^i i: im.^f »?.ni«iiwTO it i ■.V- 148 u4 Public Meetmg. i m :M contrived the best plan for avoiding unpleasant results. They never walked down any descent, but, on coriring to any gully, dashed down the icy slope at a hard gallop, and, flying across the logs which formed a bridge at the bottom, tore up the opposite ascent, till forced to abate their speed by the weight of the ve- hicle. Then came the driver's part to urge,* them up the rest of the acclivity by every form of threatening and persuasion in the vocabulary of his craft; and the obstacle once surmounted, off we were again at a smart trot. It was rather mild weather, however, for comfortable sleighing, the snow in deep places being little better than slush, through which it was heavy and slow work to drag us. At others, the ground was well-nigh bare, and then the iron-shod runners of the sleigh gave us most unpleasant music as they grated on the stones and gravel. As to shaking and jumbling, there was enough of both, as often as we struck on a lump of frozen snow, or some other obstmction ; but, at last, we got to our journey's end. The village was already thronged by numbers who had come from all parts, for it was a political meeting, and all Canadians are politicians. Such costumes as some exhibited are surely to be seen no- where else. One man, I noticed, had a suit made of drugget carpeting, with a large flower on a bright- green ground for pattern, one of the compartments of it reaching from his collar far down his back. Blanket coats of various colours, tied round the Avaist .u^j. A Public Meeting. 149 with a red sash, bufifalo coats, fur caps of all sizes and shapes, mocassins, or coarse Wellingtons, with the trowser-legs tucked into them, mitts, gloves, and fur gauntlets, added variety to the picture. Almost every one was smoking at some time or other. The sleighs were ranged, some under the shed of the vil- lage tavern, others along the sides of the street, the horses looking like nondescript animals, from the skins and coverlets thrown over them to protect them from the cold. The *bar' of the tavern was the great attraction to many, and its great blazing fire, on which a cartload of wood glowed with exhilarating heat, to others. Every one on entering, after des- perate stamping and scraping to get the snow from the feet, and careful brushing of the legs with a broom, to leave as little as possible for melting, made straight to it, holding up each foot by turns to get it dried, as far as might ^;e. There was no pretence at showing deference to any one ; a labourer had no hesitation in taking the only vacant seat, though his employer were left standing. ' Treating ' and being * treated * went on with great spirit at the bar, mutual strangers asking each other to drink as readily as if they had been old friends. Wine-glasses were not to be seen, but, instead, tumblers were set out, and * a glass ' was left to mean what any one chose to pour into them. One old man I saw put his hand in a knowing way round his tumbler, to hide his filling it to the brim ; but he proved to be a confirmed and hopeless drunk- 150 My Toe Frozen, ard, wljo had already ruined himself and his family, and was able to get drunk only at the expense of others. We stayed for a time to listen to the speeches, which were delivered from a small balcony before the window of the tavern, but were very uninteresting to me, at least, though the crowd stood patiently in the snow to hear them. I confess I was glad when our party thought they had heard enough, and turned their sleigh homewards once more. I had the misfortune to get one of my great toes frozen in the second or third winter. We were working at the edge of the woods, repairing a fence which had been blown down. The snow was pretty deep, and I had been among it some hours, and did not feel colder than usual, my feet being every day as cold as lead, whenever I was not moving actively about. • I had had my full measure of stamping and jumping to try to keep up the circulation, and had no suspicion of anything extra, till, on coming home, having taken off my stockings to heat myself better, to my consternation, the great toe of my left foot was as white as wax — the sure sign that it was frozen. Heat being of all things the most dangerous in such circumstances, I had at once to get as far as possible from the fire, while some one brought me a large basin of snow, with which I kept rubbing the poor stiff member for at least an hour before it came to its right hue. But what shall I say of the Hospitality i=;i pain of returning circulation? Freezing is nothing, but thawing is agony. It must be dreadful indeed where the injury has been extensive. Even to this day, notwithstanding all my rubbing, there is still a tender spot in the corner of my boot on cold days. It was a mercy I noticed it in time, for had I put my feet to the fire without first thawing it, I might have had serious trouble, and have lost it, after great suffering. A gentleman I knew, who got his feet frozen in 1813, in marching with his regiment from Halifax, in Nova Scotia, to Niagara — a wonderful achievement in the depth of \'/inter, through an unin- habited wilderness buried in snow — never perfectly recovered the use of them, and walked lame to the day of his death. In our early days in Canada, the sacred duty of hospitality was observed with a delightful readiness and freeness. A person who had not the means of paying might have travelled from one end of the country to another, without requiring money, and he would everywhere have found a cheerful welcome. The fact was that the sight of a strange face was a positive relief from the monotony of everyday life, and the news brought by each visitor was felt to be as pleasant to hear, as the entertainment could be for him to receive. But selfish thoughts did not, after all, dim the beautiful open-handedness of backwoods hospitality. No thought of any question or doubt rose in the matter — to come to the door was to rest '! I- s f i fi, ' im >n r 1 i! • i ii h II! Ii I' 4 152 Hospitality. for the night, and share the best of the house. I was once on my way westward to the St Clair, frora London, Canada West, just in the interval between the freezing of the roads and the fall of the snow. The stage could not run, nor was travelling by any kind of vehicle practicable ; indeed, none could have survived the battering it would have got, had it been brought out. As I could not wait doing nothing for an indefinite time, till snow made sleighing pos- sible, which I was told by the stage proprietor * might be a week, might be a fortnight,' I determined to walk the sixty miles as best I could. But such roads ! As to walking, it was impossible ; I had rather to leap from one hillock of frozen mud to another, now in the middle, now at each side, by turns. There was a little snow, which only made my difficulties greater, clogging the feet, and covering up holes. For yards together, the road had been washed away by the rains, and its whole surface was dotted with innumerable little frozen lakes, where the water had lodged in the huge cups and craters of mud which joined each other in one long network the whole way. It was a dreadful scramble, in which daylight was absolutely necessary to save broken legs. No man could have got over it in the dark. In the early afternoon, I reached a tavern at the road-side and had dinner, but as I was told that there was another, seven miles ahead, I thought I could reach it before night, and thus get so much nearer my journey's end. But Hospitality. ^SZ 1 had reckoned beyond my powers, and darkness fell while I was as yet far from my goal. Luckily, a little log-house at a distance showed itself near the road by the light through its windows. Stumbling towards it as I best could, I told them how I was benighted, and asked if I could get shelter till morning. Come in, sir,' said the honest proprietor, 'an' ye're welcome.' He proved to be a decent shoe- maker ; a young man, with a tidy young woman for his wife; and as I entered, he beckoned me to be seated, while he continued at his work on an old shoe, by the help of a candle before him. * Bad roads,' said I. * Oh, very,' answered my host. * I never puts any man away from my door ; nobody could get to the tavern over sich roads as them. Take your coat off, and make yourself comfortable.' I did as I was told, and chatted with the couple about all the ordinary topics of backwoods conversa- tion— the price of 7 md — the last crops — how long he had been there, and so on, till tea, or as they called it, supper; for Canadians generally take only three meals a day. And a right hearty meal I made, from a display of abundance of snowy bread, excel- lent butter, ham in large slices, and as much tea as there might be water in the kettle, for tea is the weak point in bush fare. When bed-time came, I found there was only one bed in the house, and could not w 154 Nearly Lost in the Woods, imagine how they were to do with me ; but this was soon solved by their dragging the feather-bed off, and bringing it out where I was, from the inner room, and spreading it on the floor opposite the fire. Nothing would induce them to keep it to them- selves and give me anything else ; I was their guest, and they would have me entertained as well as they could. Next morning, a famous breakfast was got ready, and I was again made to sit down with them. But not a word would the honest fellow hear about money. * He would never be the worse for giving a bed and a meal to a traveller, and I was very welcome/ So I had to thank them very sincerely and bid them good-day, with their consciousness of having done a kindness as their only reward. On this second day's journey, I had the most awkward mishap that ever befell me in the woods. I was all but lost in them, and that just as the sun was about to set. The roads were so frightful that I could hardly get on, and hence, when the landlord of one of the wayside taverns told me I would save some miles by cutting through the bush at a point he indicated, I was very glad to follow his advice. But trees are all very much alike, and by the time I got to where he told me to leave the road, I must have become confused ; for when I did leave it, not a sign of any track showed itself, far or near. I thought I could find it, however, and pushed on, as I fancied, in the direction that had been pointed out to me. But, still, no road Nearly Lost in the Woods, 155 made its appearance, and, finally, in turning round to look for it, I forgot which way to set myself, on again starting. In fact I was lost, fairly lost. I had got into a wide cedar-swamp, the water in which was only slightly frozen, so that I had to leap from the root of one tree to that of another. Not a sound was to be heard, nor a living creature to be seen. Only trees, trees, trees, black and unearthly in the lessening light. I hardly knew what to do. If forced to stay there all night, I might — indeed, I would likely — be frozen to death : but how to get out ? That I ultimately did, I know, but by no wisdom of mine. There was absolutely nothing to guide me. My deliverance was the merciful result of having by chance struck a slight track, which I forthwith fol- lowed, emerging, at last, not, as I had hoped, some miles ahead, but a long way behind where I had entered. Ill iHi ! i * ■ t f\-4\ 'M 15^ CHAPTER IX. Involuntaiy racing — A backwoods parsonage— Graves in the wilderness — Notions of equality — Arctic winters — Rnficd grouse — Indian fishing in winter — A mairiage — Our winter's pork. MONG our occasional \i itors, we had, one year, at one time, no fewer than three ministers, who chanced to be on some Home Missionary Society business in our quarter, and very nice company they were. Some of their stories of the adventures that befell them in their journeys amused us greatly. One was a stout, hearty Irishman, the two others Englishmen ; and what with the excitement of fresh scenes every day, and the healthy open air, of which they had perhaps too much, they were all in high spirits. At one part they had crossed a tract of very rolling land, where the road was all up one slope and down another, and this, as everything happened at the time to be one great sheet of ice, was no pleasant variety to their enjoyments. There was too little snow for sleighing, and, yet, to ride down these treacherous descents in a wheeled conveyance was Invohmtary Racing, 157 impossible. At the top of an extra long one tliey had therefore determined, not only to get out, but to take the horses out, one of them leading them down, while the other two brought down the vehicle. It was a large, double-seated affair, with four wheels, and a pole for two horses ; and it was thouglit that the best plan to get it down safely was for one of the two to go to the tongue of the pole, in front, while the other held back behind. Everything thus ar- ranged, at a given signal the first movement over the edge of the slope was made, and all went well enough for a few steps. But the worthy man be- hind soon felt that he had no power whatever, with such slippery footing, to retard the quickening si)eed of the wheels, while the stout Irishman, who chanced to be at the front, felt, no less surely, that he could neither let his pole go, nor keep it from driving him forward at a rate to which he was wholly unaccus- tomed. 'Stop it. Brooks— I'll be killed !— it'll be over me ! ' * I can't stop it,' passed and repassed in a moment, and, at last, poor Mr Brooks's feet having gone from under him, the whole affair was consigned to his Irish friend, whom the increasing momentum of his charge was making fly down the hill at a most unclerical rate. * I'll be killed ! I'm sure it'll be over me ! ' was heard to rise from him as he dashed away into the hollow beneath. His two friends not only could do nothing to help him, but could not move for laughing, mixed with anxiety. 1} I .'3 r \ r- 158 A Backwoods Parso7iagc. till at last the sufiferer managed to find relief when he had been carried a considerable way up the next slope. One of the three wore a contrivance over his fur cap in travelling which, so far as I have noticed, was unique. It was made of brown Berlin wool, much in the shape of one of the helmets of the Knights Tehiplars, in the Temple Church, the only opening being for part of the face, while what you might call its tails hung down over his shoulders. He looked very much like one of the men in the dress for going down in a diving-bell when it was on him, his head standing out like a huge ball from his shoulders. Their entertainment was, it appeared, sometimes strange enough. One gave an account of a night he had spent in a backwoods parsonage, where the mice had run over his pillow all night, the only furniture in his room, besides the bed, being some pieces of bacon and a bit of cheese. He had had the only spare room in the house, in fact, which, in the absence of guests, served as a store-room. Nor was this the worst ; though it was in the depth of winter, he could see the stars through chinks of the roof as he lay, and snow having come on in the night, he found it lying deep on his coverlet when he awoke. What some clergymen suffer in the poorer districts must, indeed, be terrible. A touching thing about the one who could offer only such poor accommodation to a friend, was his point- Notions of Equality. 159 ing to a little mound in the few feet of enclosure before his door, and saying that his only son, an infant, was buried there. The way in which graves are scattered up and down Canada is, indeed, one of the most affecting sights, as one passes. Churchyards are, of course, only found where population has gathered to some extent, and, hence, all who die in the first periods of settlement used to be buried on their own farms. Very often, in riding through old parts of the country, a little paling in the side of a field tells the story of some lonely grave. The Moslems who feel themselves about to die in the desert pass away with a parting prayer that the Resurrection Angel may not forget their lonely resting-places at the last day. I have often thought that these patri- archs of the woods might have closed their life with the same petition. One of our visitors told us an amusing story of the notions of equality that everywhere prevailed. He had been visiting an old Canadian township, with his wife and a young lady, their friend, and found, when night came, that there was only one bed unoc- cupied, which was appropriated to himself and his wife. Their friend was, therefore, led away to an- other room in which there were two beds — one for the host and his wife, the other for the servant, and to this she was pointed, with the information that if she lay close she could find room at the girl's back. Not altogether relishing this arrangement, she made i" 'I ' 11 I i 1 1 'I i V < il I ' I't i6o Arctic Wi7ttcrs. ( s '\ some excuse for returning to the "parlour," where she sat for a time, only coming to her sleeping-place when she could not help it. But that she should ever have hesitated in the matter seemed to all, alike, unaccountable, and, our visitor assured us, had so impressed their minds, that, a good while after, he learned that they still talked of it, and spoke of her pride as marking unusual depravity. In later years I was happy to make the acquaint- ance, in one of the Canadian towns, of Captain L , who had commanded one of the expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin, and, in many con- versations with him, learned particulars of winter life in the more northern part of the American con- tinent, which, in comparison, make that of Canada even mvitmg. To think of undressing, for eight months of the year, in these fearful regions, is out of the question. The dress, frozen stiff through the uay, is thawed into soaking wetness by the heat of a snow-house at night, in which each sits as close to his neighbour as is possible, with no light but that of a miserable lamp, and imprisoned on every side by the heaped-up blocks of snow. In Canada, we can always get ourselves dried, whatever the weather ; but there, all alike, when not on board ship, are wet, month after month, each night through the winter. Happening one day to hear a boy whist- ling the negro song, * Old Uncle Ned,' the captain stopped me with the question, ' Where do you think ^^31.^. Ruffed Grouse. i6i I first heard that song?' Of course I told him I could not tell. * It was on a terrible night, in Prince Regent's Inlet, when we were crossing it. Tlie snow was falling very heavily, and the storm roaring tlirough the hammocks, and I had called a halt behind a great piece of ice which offered a shelter. I tho'-ight we had better build a snow-house behind it and take refuge for the niglit. The men squatted down in this, I in their midst, all of us huddled together as close as possible, and, to keep up their spirits through the dismal hours, they began singing one thing after another, and that among the rest.' This was worse Jhan the encampments of surveyors, l)ad though they be. There was not a great deal of sport to be had, if we exclude the deer, in our neighbourhood. When we went out with our guns, the snow was generally marked by a good many squirrel tracks, and the •noodpeckers were still to be seen, but game, properly so called, was not abundant. There was some how- ever, and we managed to get our proportion now and then for our table. One day, in passing a tree, I heard a sound something like that of a grouse rising, and on turning, to my astonishment, found it came from a bird like our partridges, which had lighted on a bough close at hand. A moment, and it was in a fair way for contributing to our dinner. These birds are in Canada called partridges, but their proper name is the ruffed grouse. When sprung, it flies with II H -I I • H ji I A 1 62 Ruffed Grouse. IV\ ^' ■■■ \ i great vigour and with a loud whirring noise, sweeping to a considerable distance through the woods before it alights. The cock has a singular power of making a drumming noise with his wings, v.'hich, when heard in the silence of the woods, has a strange effect. Standing on an old fallen log, and inflating its whole body as a turkey-cock does, strutting and wheeling about with great stateliness, he presently begins to strike with his stiffened wings in short and quick strokes, which become more and more rapid until they run into each other, making the sound to which I allude. It is no doubt the way in which he pays his addresses to his mate, or calls her from a distance. They always perch in trees, delighting in the thick shade of the spruce or the pine, and are perfect models of stupidity, letting you get every advantage in your efforts to shoot them. I have known one sit, without attei-ipting to stir, while a dog was getting frantic in his appeals at the tree foot that you should come and kill it. If your gun snap you may take your time, and, if necessary, may draw your charge and reload, without your victim moving. He will stand and gape at you during the whole process, even if your dog be barking and tearing a few yards below him. It is even said that you may bag a whole covey of them if you shoot the lowest first and go upwards. I myself have seen my brother, on coming on some of them when without hi§ gun, run home perhaps half a mile for it, and find them still sitting where they were, Indian Fishing in Wi?iicr. 163 H" when he came back, as if waiting to be shot. They are delicious eating, and so tender is their skin that you must not think of carrying them by the head, which would be sure to come off with the weight of the body. One day, walking down the ice of the river, a curious appearance presented itself at some distance before me, like a brown heap, or mound, thrown up on the white surface. Making my way towards it, when about a hundred yards off I thought I saw it move a little, and, halting for a moment, perceived that it really did so. I was half inclined to go home for my gun to make myself safe, when suddenly the head and shoulders of an Indian, raised from the edge of the buffalo skin, for such it was, dissipated any alarm. Going up to him, I found he was employed in fishing, and partly for protection, partly to keep the fish from being alarmed, had completely covered himself with the hide which had so attracted my attention. He had cut a hole through the two-feet-tluck ice about a foot square, and sat with a bait hanging from one hand, while in the other he held a short spear to transfix any deluded victim which it might tempt to its destruction. The bait was an artificial fish of white wood, with leaden eyes and tin fins, and about eight or nine inches in length. He seemed rather annoyed at my disturbing him ; but on my giving him a small ball of twine I happened to have with me we became good enough friends, and after a few minutes I left him. : li Ml A Mamage, There was a marriage on the river the first winter we were there, which in some respects amused us. The bride Avas an elegant girl, of genteel manners ; and the bridegroom Avas a well-educated and very re- spectable young man ; but that either of them should have thought of marrying in such a state of poverty as was common to both was a thing to be thought of only in Canada. The bridegroom's wealth was, I believe, limited to some twenty pounds, and the bride brought for her portion fifty acres of land and some stock, which a relative gave her as a dowry. But money she had none, and even the shoes in which she went to be married, as I afterAvards learned, had been borrowed from a married sister. Their future home was simply a dilapidated log-house, which stood with its gable to the roadside, perhaps eight feet by eighteen, forming two apartments, an addition, which had once been in- tended to be made, so as to join the end next the road at right angles, but remained unfinished, being shut off by a door of thin deal, which, alone, kept the wind out at that corner. We crossed the ice to the American side to have the ceremony performed, after which there was a grand dinner, with true Canadian abund- ance, in her patron's house, in which, up to that time, she had had her home. Their own shanty not being as yet habitable, the young couple remained there till it was repaired, so as to let them move to it. But no money could be spent on the mansion ; whatever was to be done had to be done by the kind aid of amateurs, Primiiive Furniture. 165 ! :'1 if any Canadians deserve that name, whatever they may have to undertake. The chimney had to be re- built of mud, the walls caulked and filled up with mud, some panes of glass put in the two little windows, a wooden latch to be fitted to the thin deal that formed the outer door, and the whole had to be white-washed, after which all was prone anced ready. The furniture was as primitive as the house. A few dishes on a rude shelf, a pot or two, a few wooden chairs and a table, set off the one end ; while, in the other, an apology for a carpet, and a few better things — the faint traces of richer days in their fathers' houses — made up their parlour ; a wooden bench on the one side, ingeniously disguised as a sofa, reminding you of the couplet in Goldsmith'^! description of the village ale-house, where was seen * The chest, contrived a double debt to pay — A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.' « The produce of the fifty acres, which were mostly cleared, but which, having been the farm of an old I'rench settler, were well nigh worn out for a time, .;';(1 had Avr-^tched fences, was to be the support of the young housekeepers, though, less than a year bc.jre, the husband had been a student in one of the universities in Scotland. To have seen him when fairly installed in his agricultural honours, in a wretched straw hat, blue shirt, cotton trowsers, and heavy coarse boots, with a long blue beech rod in \ ■I ,1 V. I 'i\ ) ■' . .1! ' I >*d± 166 Our Winters Pork, his hand, shouting to his oxen, it would hardly have occurred to an old countryman that he was anything but a labourer. I am thankful to say, however, that he ultimately escaped from the misery in which his imprudent marriage threatened to involve him, by getting into a pretty good mercantile situation, in which, I hope, he is now comfortably settled. I should have said, that, having no money with which to hire labour, all the work on his fami had to be done by his own hands, without any aid. The trifle he had at first melted like snow, the two having set out with it to make a wedding-trip, in a sleigh, to a town seventy miles off, from which they returned with little but the empty purse. A little before Christmas a great time came on — the high solemnity of the annual pig-killing for the winter. It was bad enough for the poor swine, no doubt, but the human details were, in some respects, sufficiently ludicrous. The first year we got a man to do the killing, and a woman to manage the rest ; and, betwi-en them, with a ra or-blade fixed into a piece of wood for a scraper, they won our admiration by their skill. I mention it only for an illustra- tion it afforded of the misery to which the poor Indians are often reduced in the winter. A band of them made their appearance almost as soon as we had begun, and hung round, for the sake of the entrails and other offal, till all was over. Of course we gave them good pieces, but they were hungry enough to Kn E^SS Sufferings of the Indians, 167 have needed the whole, could we have spared it. As soon as anything was thrown aside, there was a scram- ble of both men and women for it. Each, as soon as he had secured his share, twisted it round any piece of stick that lay near, and, after thrusting it for a minute into the fire, where the water was heating for scalding the pigs, devoured it greedily, filthy and loathsome as it was. They must often be in great want in the cold weather, when game is scarce. I was coming from the bush one morning when I saw an Indian tugging with all his might at something that lay in the middle of the road. On nearer ap- proach, it proved to be one of our pigs which had died of some disease during the night. The poor fellow had put his foot on its side, and was pulling with all his strength at the hind-leg to try to tear off the ham, but a pig's skin is very tough, and though he pulled at it till he had crossed and recrossed the road several times, he had to give up the battle at last, and leave it as he found it. A friend of mine who was lost in the woods for several days, and, in the end, owed his deliverance to his falling in with a fev/ AvigAvams, told me that the Indians informed him that they were sometimes for three days together with- out food. !i I* Ml f! , I . ■::\ ( i68 i \ • I '^ % 1 1 ■> CHAPTER X. Our neighbours — Insect plagues — Military officers' families in . the bush — An awkward mistake — Dr D nearly shot for a bear — Major M — Our candles — Fortunate escape from a fatal accident. jE used to have delightful evenings some- times when neighbouring settlers came to our house, or when we went to their houses. Scanty though the population was, we had lighted on a section of the country which had attracted a number of educated and intelligent men, who, with their families, made capital society. Down the river we had Captain G , but he was little respected by reason of his irregular habits, which, however, might be partly accounted for by the effect on his brain of a fierce slash on the head which he had got at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo. Then, above us, we had, about three miles off, Mr R , an English gentleman-farmer, who had found his way to the backwoods, after losing much money from one cause or another. He was one of the church- wardens, and leader of the choir in the Episcopal chapel, as it was called, for there is no church estab- WBSOBm Insect Plagitcs. 169 Hshment in Canada ; a man, moreover, of much gen- eral information, a good shot, and, what was better, a good Christian. He had ahvays plenty of fresh London newspapers of the stiff Tory class, but acceptable to all alike in such a place as St Clair. His house was at the foot of a steep bank, and as there were only himself and Mrs R to occupy it, its size was not so striking as its neatness. A broad verandah ran along the side of it next the river, its green colour contrasting very pleasantly with the whiteness of the logs of the house. There were three apartments within ; one a sitting-room, the other two bed-rooms, one of which was ahva}r, at the disposal of a visitor. Over the mantelpiece hung a gun and a rifle, and on it stood, as its special orna- ment, a silver cup given by one of the English Cabinet Ministers as the prize in a shooting-match in B shire, and won by Mr R . There was only one drawback to a visit to him, at least in summer, and that was the certainty of your getting more than you bargained for in the insect way when you went into the barn to put up your horse. Fleas are wonder- fully plentiful throughout Canada, but some parts are worse that others. A sandy soil seemed to breed them, as the mud of the Nile was once thought to breed worms, and Mr R 's barn stood on a spot which the fleas themselves might have selected as a favourable site for a colony. Under the shelter of his sheds they multiplied to a wonderful extent. So •| !"' 170 Insect Plagues. .a Pi i •; incurable was the evil that it had come to be thought only a source of merriment. * Ah, you've been at the barn, have you ? ha, ha ! ' was all the pity you could get for any remark on the plentifulness of insect life in these quarters. * It isn't half so bad,' he added one day, * as the preacher over the river who sat down at the doorstep of the chapel to look over his notes before service, and had hardly got into the pulpit before he found that a whole swarm of ants had got up his trousers. You may think how his hands went below the bookboard on each side of him, but it wouldn't do. He had to tell the congregation that he felt suddenly indisposed, and would be back in a few moments, which he took advantage of to turn the infested garment inside out behind the chapel, and after having freed them of his tormentors, went up to his post again, and got through in peace.* * I don't think he was much worse off,' struck in a friend, ' than the ladies are with the grasshoppers. The horrid creatures, with their great hooky legs, and their jumping six feet at a time, make dreadful work when they take a notion of springing, just as folks are passing over them. I've seen them myself through a thin muslin dress making their way hither and thither in service-time, and there they must stay till all is over.' But I am forgetting the list of our river friends. There were, besides Mr B , four or five miles ^^>mm 1 • Officers Families in the Bush, 171 above us, Captain W , who had been flag lieute- nant of -a frigate off St Helena while Bonaparte was a captive there, and had managed to preserve a lock of his soft, light-bro^vn hair ; and Mr L , brotlier of one of our most eminent English judges, and himself once a midshipman under Captain Marryatt ; and Post-Captain V , and the clergyman — the farthest only ten miles off. There were, of course, plenty of others, but they were of a very different class — French Canadians, agricultural labourers turned farmers, and the like, with very little to attract in their society. The number of genteel families who had betaken themselves to Canada was, in those days, astonishing. The fact of the Governors being then mostly mili- tary men, who offered inducements to their old com- panions in arms who had not risen so high in rank as they, led to crowds of that class burying them- selves in the woods all over the province. I dare say they did well enough in a few instances, but in very many cases the experiment only brought misery upon themselves and their families. Brought up in ease, and unaccustomed to work with their hands, it was not to be expected that they could readily turn mere h'.bourers, which, to be a farmer in Canada, is absoluteL} necessary. I was once benighted about forty miles from»nome, and found shelter for the night in a log-house on the roadside, where I shared a bed on the floor with two labourers, the man of s^. ■ ^ As^ > IMAGS EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) /> {./ ^>. .^t^ ^cT <- ^>^ {< ^ ^ .^ 1.0 V^ 1^ itt Bii g2.2 I.I ^ US 12.0 lliiSlJr&H4 6" FhotograiJiic Sciences Corporatm \\ asv^T^TMAmsTRin WnSTIR,N.Y. KSM (716)172-4503 o^ JHik K<^ ^^4^ ^ ^ \ ^ o^ 11 f I ! 1 72 Officers Families in the Busk. the house and his wife sleeping at the other end of the room. After breakfast the next morning, in grand style, with cakes, * apple sauce ' in plateful.s, bread white as snow, meat, butter, cream, cheese, fritters, and colourless green tea of the very worst description, I asked them if they could get any con- veyance to take me home, as the roads were very heavy for travelling on foot, from the depth of tlie snow, and its slipperiness in the beaten track. Tlu'\- themselves, however, had none, but I was directed to Captain L 's, close at hand, where I was told I might find one. The house stood on a rising ground, which was perfectly bare, all the trees hav- ing been cut down for many acres round. There wan not even the pretence of garden before the doors, nor any enclosure, but the great shapeless old log- house stood, in all its naked roughness, alone. Mrs L , I found, was an elderly lady of elegant man- ners, and had seen a great deal of the world, having been abroad with her husband's regiment in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. She had met Sir Walter Scott at Malta, and was full of gossip about him and society generally in England and elsewhere. Her dress struck me on entering. It had once been a superb satin, but that was very many years before. There was hardly anything to be called furniture in the house, a few old wooden chairs, supplemented by some blocks of wood, mere cuts of trees, serving for seats, a great deal table, and a * grand piano ! ' which, 1-*,., Officers Families in the Bush, 1 73 Mrs L told me, they bought at Vienna, forming all that could be seen. The very dog-irons on which their fire rested were broken. Overhead, I heard feet pattering on the loose open boards which formed the floor of some apartments, and was presently in- formed that * the dressing-room ' of the Misses L was above, and that they would soon be down. Not an inch of carpet, nor any ornament on the wails, nor anything, in fact, to take off the forlorn look of emptiness, was in the place ; but the stateliness of language and manner on the part of the hostess was the same as if it had been a palace. After a time, a lad, the youngest of the household, made his appear- ance, and was informed of my wish to get on to Bidport as quickly as possible. He was introduced as having been bom in Corfu, and as speaking Greek as fluently as English ; but the poor fellow had a bad chance of ever making much use of his lin- guistic acquirements in such a place. The horse having to be caught, and a jumper to be * fixed,' I had a long rest before setting out, and, in the mean time, the sound of the axe, and of wooden pins being driven home, intimated that ^the vehicle was being manufactured. Captain L , it appeared, had come there in the idea that the country would soon be filled up, and that, in some magical way, the soil, covered though it was with trees, would yield him a living at once plentiful and easily procured. But years had passed on, the money got for his 1 ^* n 1 1 If 11 jj 1 ^^B 1 * ^K I ^^K *■ ^^^^ 1 74 Officers Families in the Bush, commission was spent, and the township round liim was still almost a wilderness. From one step to another the family sank into the deepest want, until Mrs li was at last forced to try to get food, by making up the wreck of her former finery into caps and such like for the wives of the boors around^ and hawking them about, till she could sell them for flour or potatoes. It could not have been expected that tlie captain could work like a labourer — he was totally unfit for it, and would have died over his task, or, at best, could have made no living ; and, except the stripling who was to drive me, the family con- sisted only of daughters. One of these, however, shordy after my visit, actually managed to make an excellent marriage even in that horrible place; but there was a dash of the ludicrous even in the court- ship, from the pinching and straits to which their poverty subjected them. The suitor had not as yet declared himself, and the fact of his being a gende- man by birth and education made his frequent visits only so much the more embarassing. One day he had come in the forenoon, and stayed so long, that it was clear he had no intention of leaving before dinner, while there was literally nothing in the house but a few potatoes, which they could not of course offer him. What was to be done? Mrs L and the fair one, her eldest daughter, retired to a comer of the room to consult, and, lest anything should be overheard, they spoke in Italian, which An Awkward All stake. they never dreamed of the suitor understanding. To his unspeakable amusement, the whole perplexity of the case forthwith proceeded to unfold itself in foreign syllables. * The nasty fellow, what in the world won't he go away for ? ' says the daughter ; * look at him there, sitting like a fool when people are in such trouble. He ought to know that we have nothing in the pantry but a few horrid potatoes.' And so forth. This was quite enough for the visitor. He suddenly recollected that he had another call to make, and their difficulty about him was over in a minute. But the marriage came off notwithstanding, and a handsome couple they made. After a time the sleigh was ready, such as it was — a rough box, on rough runners, close to the ground, with a piece of plank for a seat, and a bed-quilt for a wrapper; and late that night I got home, a half- sovereign and his expenses making the poor young fellow right glad I had chanced to come his way. One day I was much diverted by an incident narrated to me by Mr B . *You know,* said he, * Dr D , from Toronto, was riding along in a sleigh yesterday on some business or other. You are aware he is very short and stout, and he had on a buffalo coat, and a great fur cap. Well, down goes his horse, its feet balled with the snow, I suppose ; and there it lay, helpless, on its side, under the shafts. It was pretty near old John Thompson's, the Scotch- man. Out gets the doctor to help his poor horse by u i i 176 Ilfarriages in the Bush. 1 I !' : \ 1; n.\- "I unbuckling its straps and so on, and, being very short- sighted, he had to get down his face ahuost on it. Just at this time, Mrs Thompson chanced to come to the door, and there was this apparition in the distance, in the middle of the road. She instantly made up her mind what it was. " Eh, John, John, bring your gun ; here's a bear devoorin* a horse ! " But they didn't shoot the doctor after all, for the old man found out in time who it was.' But I have to say a little more about some of the marriages in our neighbourhood, or not far from it. You may easily suppose that it is not every one who is so lucky as Miss L , of whom I have spoken. Those of both sexes who made poor matches were much more numerous in those early days. There was Kate S , the daughter of a captain in the arm}-, an elegant girl, who, for want, I suppose, of any other suitor, married a great coarse clown, whom her father, had he been living then, would hardly have taken to work for them. When he died, she married another, his fellow, and ended, on his dying, by taking, as her third husband, a working tailor, with three or four children. There was Major M , who had come to the country about the same time as Captain L ; nothing could be more wretched than the appearance of his house on the road-side, with the great trees almost close to it, himself an elderly man, and his only children two daughters. I remember passing on horseback one frightful morning, when the roads were 1: ^ ii < I Scarcity of Candles. ^11 at the worst, and finding him on the top of a prostrate log, trying to cut off enough for his fire. His daughter finally married a small tradesman in a neighbouring town ; and the major thankfully went to close his days with his son-in-law, in far greater comfort than he had known for a long time. Young fellows married girls wliom their mothers would hardly have taken for serv- ants in England ; partly, I suppose, because there were not in some parts many to choose from, and partly, no doubt, b^ cause their position as farm-labourers, which they had really come to be, had lowered their tastes. I remember seeing a young man come out of a village tavern with a short black pipe in his mouth, a long beech rod in his hand, and a blue blouse, surmounted by a >\Tetched straw hat, for his dress, his whole ap- pearance no better than that of any labourer round. He was driving an ox-waggon, but, before starting, a lidy at my side in the stage, which had stopped at the tavern, accos* jd him, and they entered freely into con- versation together. He turned out to be a son of Colonel , who lived in a wretched log-hut not far distant. He told his friend that he hoped to get a good berth that summer as purser on one of the small lake steamers; and I hope he succeeded. Mean- while, he was mixing with the herd of * bush-whackers,' as Canadians say, at the tavern fire, himself almost one of them. We had one drawback in the long winter nights — there was often a great scarcity of candles. One was 12 m ! . I II i \\ I y : 178 Air-holes in the Ice. i Hi lighted at supper, but it was put out immediately after the meal ; and we had to sit at the light of the fire, which we made as bright as possible by a supply of resinous pine, from time to time. We sometimes had enough of candles, indeed, but I think we were more often without them. Some lard in a saucer, with a piece of rag for a wick, was one of our plans in ad- dition to the pine, when we wished to see our way to our beds. There was very nearly a fatal accident do^vn the river one day, occasioned by a sleigh, and the folks in it, with the horses as well, breaking through an air- hole in the ice, that is, a spot at which the air im- prisoned below the ice had found its escape, leaving the surface only very slightly frozen. How they got out I hardly know, but the ice round the hole was quite strong ; and after one of the party had clambered upon it he managed to fish out the rest, who had clung to the sleigh. Even the horses were saved ; but the method taken with them seemed to me as hazardous as it was strange : ropes were passed round their necks as quickly as possible, and when by ,this means they were half choked, they floated so high that they were got out with comparative ease. ! t ; 5! 1/9 11 ! CHAPTER XI. 'Now Spring returns' — Sugar-making — Bush psalmody —Bush preaching — Worship under difficulties — A clerical Mrs Partington — Biology — A ghost — *It slips good' — Squatters. jY the middle of March the sun had begun, in the very open places, to show some power, especially in the little spots shelter- ed from the cold by the woods, where his beams found an entrance to the soil. Here and there, traces of the bare earth began to reappear, and the green points of the succulent plants were preparing to burst out into their first leaves ; the buds, too, on some of the trees, were distinctly visible, but there was a long time still before us between these first promises of spring and their actual realization. The last snowfall came in the middle of April, and, between that time and the first of May, the weather could hardly be said to be settled into spring. But already, towards the third week of March, the birds had made up their minds to come back to us, in expectation of the opening leaf. Flocks of blue jays, in their beauti- ful plumage, blue set off with white and black, flitted from the top of one of the lower trees to another, 11 ; I '11 f i8o Snga r-making. t . 1 Ml t- r chattering incessantly. Everything had been desolate around us for long, and now to see such signs of returning warmth and verdure was unspeakably de- lightful. With the first opening of spring, and while yet tlvj snow lay thick in the fields and the woods, the season of maple sugar -making commenced. It seemed extraordinary to me for a long time that sugar should be got in quantities from a great forest tree, the modest sugar-cane having been always in my mind the only source of it — except, indeed, the sugar-beet, by the growth of which Napoleon tried tr ^-\e France furnish her own sugar, instead of h: _, to buy English colonial sugar from any of the European ports. But a great quantity is made, in Canada and the United States, from the maple, both for sale and home use, a vast amount being eaten by the native-bom Canadians as a sweetmeat, just as we eat candy; and very little else is known in many parts of the backwoods for household pur- poses. The best days for sugar-making are the bright ones, after frosty nights, the sap running then most freely. The first thing we had to do with our * bush,' which is the name given to the maples pre- served for sugar-making, was to see that each tree was provided with a trough, which we made out of pine, or some other soft wood, by cutting a log into lengths of perhaps two feet, then splitting each in two, and hollowing the flat side so that it would . 11 Sit^a r- making. i8i hold about a bucketful of sap. Wc next took narrow j>icces of wood about a foot long, and made spouts of them ^vith a gouge, after which we made a cut in each tree with the axe, three or four inches lor^ :'..:d an inch deep, in a slanting direction, adding another straight cut at the lower end of it with the gouge, that there might be no leaking, and sinking a hole for a spout, where they met ; the gouge that cut the spouts making the hole into which they were thrust. Below tlicse spouts the troughs were set to collect the sap, which was carried as often as they were nearly full to another, of enormous dimensions, close to the fire. These colossal troughs are simply huge trunks of trees hollowed out for the purpose ; ours would have lickl fifty barrels. The emptying into this was made every morning and evening until a large quantity had been gathered, and then the boiling began in large 'kettles,* as they are called, made for the purpose, and suspended over the blazing fire from a stout pole, resting on two forked branches thrust into the earth at each side. The sap once in the kettles lias a hard time of it : the fires are kept up in royal brightness for days together, not being allowed to die out even during the night. It was a very pleasant time with us, though it was hard work, and what with the white snow, the great solemn trees, the wild figures dancing hither and thither, and our loud merriment, it was very striking when the evenings had set in. One of the kettles t* : \\ ; 1^ l82 Su^ar-7naking. I ' ii was chosen for 'sugaring off,' and had especially assiduous watching. Not a moment's rest could its unfortunate contents get from the incessant boiling we kept up; fresh sap being added as often as it seemed to be getting tor- dry. In its rage, the saj) would every now and then make desperate eflforts to boil over ; but we were on the watch for this also, and as soon as it manifested any intention of the kind, we rubbed round the inside of the kettle with a piece of pork-fat, bey d the limits of which it would no more pass than if it had been inside some magic circle. My sisters were as busy as we at every part of the process, and their poor dresses showed abundant and lasting memorials of their labours, in the rents made in them by the bushes. What w^e were all like, from head to foot, after a time, may be more easily conceived than described. Our smudged faces, and sugary, sloppy clothes, made us all laugh at one another. As the sap grew thicker with the incessant boiling, another element was added to our amusement in the stickiness of everything we handled, if we leaned against a log at hand we were fast bound ; and the pots, pans, ladles, buckets, axe-handles, troughs — everything we touched, indeed, seemed to part from us only with regret. We were fortunate in having no young children amongst us, as they would, of course, have been in the thick of the fray, and have become half-crystallized before all was over. The 'l^. Sugar-Diaki'itg, '83 'clearing off* was nianagcil by ijouriiig in beaten eggs when the sap was beginning to get thick. This served to bring all the impurities at once to the top, so that we could readily skim them off. Several ingenious >vays had been told us of knowing when the process was complete. One was by boring small holes in a flat piece of wood, and blowing on it after dipping it into the syrup ; the sugar going through the holes in long bubbles, if it were boiled enough. Another plan was to put a little on the snow, when, if it got stiff, it was time to pour all out. P^verything that \vould hold it was then, forthwith, put into requi- sition, after having been well greased to keep the sugar from sticking, and, presently, we had cakes, loaves, lumps, blocks, every shape, in fact, of rich brown-coloured sugar of our own making. Some, which we wanted to crystallize, was put into a barrd, and stirred while cooling, which effectually answered the purpose. Small holes bored in the bottom made the sugar thus obtained whiter than the rest, by al- lowing the molasses mingled with it to drain off. We kept some sap for vinegar, which we made by simply boiling three or four pailfuls until reduced to one, and corking this up in a keg for a time. For the first and second years the poorer settlers have a dreadful job of it in the sugar bush, from not having had sufficient time to fence it in from the cattle, which from their intrusion are a constant annoyance. They poke their great noses into every- i n i 1 84 Sugar- making. 11 I ■ \ •'. -i thing, and one taste of the sap is very much to them what they say the taste of blood is to a tiger, in stimulating their thirst for more. In they come, braving ill risks for a sip of their much-loved nectar ; out go the spouts from the trees, over go the buckets of sap, and, worse than all, if the brutes succeed in drinking any quantity, they are very often seriously, if. not mortally injured, their indulgence acting on them very much as clover does, blowing out their stomachs and even bursting them. Another annoy- ance at first, is the not having had time to cut out the 'under brush,' so as to make it possible to take a sleigh with barrels on it, from tree to tree, to collect the sap, with the help of oxen, and, hence, having to carry bucket by bucket to the 'kettles,' often from a considerable distance, which is no trifling task, over wet snow, and rough ground, thick with every ob- struction. We. were fortunate in this respect, having been warned in time, so that everything was as light as such work can be. The sugaring-oflf day was rather a festivity with us, as we followed the custom of a good many of our neighbours, and invited some young folks to come to a carnival on the warm sugar, which is very nice, though I should not care to eat as m'^-h at a time as some of our visitors did. The quantity of sap which a single tree yields is astonishing. I think some gave not less than fifty gallons, and the loss of it seemed to do them good rather than harm. The older and stronger die m of Bitsh Psalmody, 185 trees the better the sap, and the more abundant — a peciiharity which it would be well for each of us to be able to have said of his o\vn life as it advanced. The Indians must have been acquainted with the property of the maple for ages ; stone sugar-making utensils, of their manufacture, comprising stone troughs and long stone spouts, hollowed out and pointed for sticking into the trees, having often been found in some dis- tricts. The few who still survive keep up the habits of their ancestors in this, as in other respects, numbers of them offering sugar which they have made, for barter, each spring. Happening to be back in the bush one Sunday, I stopped to hear the Presbyterian minister preach ; he being expected to come there that afternoon. A log schoolhouse was made to serve for a chapel — a dark, wretched affair, into which, gradually, about seventy or eighty people managed to cram themselves. The singing was conducted by an old German, whose notions of music were certainly far behind those of his countrymen generally. The number <"'" grace notes he threw in was astounding; but the people joined as well as they could, using their powerful lungs with so much vigour, and in such bad time and tune, as to be irresistibly ludicrous. As to keeping abreast of each other through a verse or a line, it seemed never to occur to them. A great fellow would roar himself out of breath, with his face up to the ceiling and his mouth open, like a hen drinking, and then stop, make ( i il 'u i:t il j , ! \'\ \% 1 86 Worship tuidcr Dijfictdties, 1 1 !■ i .*;| ''■ a swallow to recover himself, or, perhaps, spit on the floor, and begin again where he left off, in total disre- gard of the fact that the others were half a line ahead. Who can chronicle the number of ' repeats ' of each line, or portion of one ? And as to the articulation of the words, who could have guessed their meaning from the uncouth sounds he heard ? The windows were very small ;^and, when filled with people, the place was too dark for print to be legible, so that, notwith- standing the excessive cold, the minister had to stand outside the door through the whole service. About the middle of the sermon a brief interruption took place, from a freak on the part of the stove, which stood in the middle of the room, and was of the common kind, with the sides held together by a raised edge on the top and bottom. As usual in all Canadian churches and meetings, some one was stuffing this contrivance full of wood while the sermon was going on, when, in a moment, the top got a trifle too much lifted up, and down came stove-pipe, stove, fire and wood, in one grand rumble, to the ground. As the floor chanced to be made only of roughly-smoothed planks, with great gapa between each, and the carpenters' shavings and other inflammable matter were clearly visible be- low, the danger of the whole structure catching fire was great; but the congregation were equal to the emergency. A number of men were out in a moment, to return, the next, with great armfuls of snow, which they heaped on the burning mound in such profusion Worship under Difficulties. 1 87 thit every spark of fire was extinguished in a feu- minutes. The bottom of the stove was then prepared again for the reception of the sides, the top was once more fitted on, the stove-pipes put in their place, the rubbish thrust into its proper abode inside, and, by the help of a few whittlings made on the spot, a fresh fire was roaring in a very short time, enabling the minister to conclude in peace and comfort. I have seen strange incidents in backwoods Avor- ship. One church happened to be built on rather high posts, leaving an open space of from two to three feet below, between the floor and the ground. Into this shady retreat a flock of sheep, headed by the bell-wether, had made its entrance one Sunday morning while we were at worship overhead, and presently tinkle, tinkle, tinkle went the bell, now in single sounds, and then, when the wearer perhaps shook some fly off its ears, in a rapid volley. No- body stirred. The clergyman alone seemed incom- moded; but no one thought he was particularly so till, all at once, he stopped, came down from the pulpit, went out and drove off the intruders, after which he recommenced as if nothing had occurred. At another place, at the communion, to my astonish- ment, instead of the ordinary service, a black bottle and two tumblers were brought out, with all due solemnity, as substitutes. We had a sample of the strength of female intellect, one winter, in an old woman, who visited the next (Mi I ■1 ^ h U i )i : \ ■ I i.l f! r «.; 'l r w i ■ u I ■ p ■ i '1 I ' I i illirl I li 1 88 ^ Clerical Mrs Partington. village to preach on the Prophecies, and drew the whole of the humbler population of the neighbour- hood to hear her. Grammar, of course, was utterly disregarded ; she knew the obscurer books of Scrip- ture by heart, and having a tongue more than usually voluble, and an assurance that nothing could abash, she did her best to enlighten the crowd on • no mean topics. Using her left arm as a chronological measure, she started with Daniel, at the elbow, and reached the consummation of all things at her finger-ends, which she figuratively called * the jumping off place.' Some of her similes, as reported through the township, amused me exceed- ingly as samples of what was just suited to please the majority of her hearers. * There's no more grace, sir, in your heart than there's blood in a turnip,' was her apostrophe to some imaginary sinner. ' Them sinners ' she added — * them hardened sinners, needs to be done to as you do to a old black tobaky pipe — throw 'em into the fire, and bum 'em — then they'll be wite.* Such wandering luminaries are, for the most part, importations from the States, where they abound almost beyond belief. Another of these learned expositors visited us for the purpose of giving lectures on ' Biology,' by which he meant the effects produced on his patients by looking at large wooden buttons which he carried with him; a continued stare at them for a time making the parties become, as he averred, completely subject, Biology, 189 even in their thoughts, to his will. He would tell one he was a pig, and all manner of swinish sounds and actions followed. Another was assured he could not rise from his scat, and forthwith appeared glued to the spot, despite his most violent efforts to get up. Whether there was any actual truth in the exhibition, through the power of some subtle mesmeric laws of which we know little I cannot say. Some thought there was; others, that the whole was a joke of some young fellows who wished to create fun at the expense of the audiences. But the exhibitor himself was a real curiosity in his utter illiterateness and matchless assurance. He had seen somebody else exhibiting in this way, and. like a shrewd Yankee, thought he might make a little money by doing the same. I wished to gain some information from him on the subject if he had any to give, and waited, after the crowd had separated, to ask him about it ; but all I could get from him was the frank acknowledgment that * this here pro- fession was not the one he follered ; he had jist been a-coming to Canedy after some lumber — he dealt in lumber, he did — and calc'lated that he might as well's no make his expenses by a few licturs.' I almost laughed outright at this candid avowal, and left him. One day, Louis de Blanc, an old Canadian voyageur, who had left his arduous avocation and settled near our place long before we came, amused me by a story 1:^ ii f : I I'i* I i' i ■ 1 i ^ ■ 1, I i I ij I ^- ii If? It? :5 ; I •! P. ■ 190 A Ghost. of an apparition he had seen the night before in pass- ing the graveyard at the little Catholic chapel on the roadside, two miles above us. It was a little plot of ground, neatly fenced round with wooden pickets, with the wild flowers growing rank and high among the few lonely graves, — some tall black crosses here and there out-topping them. 'You know Michel Cauchon died last week ; well, he always had a spite at me ; and, sure enough, last night about twelve o'clock, as I was passing the churchyard, didn't I see his ghost running across the road in the shape of a rabbit. Ah ! how I sweated as I ran home ! I never stopped till I got over my fence and safe in bed.' The poor rabbit that had caused the panic would, no doubt, have been astonished, could it have learned the terror it had inspired. It was most astonishing to see what kind of food some of these old Canadians relished — at least, it was so to me. One day having gone over to Le Blanc's on some errand, I found his son Louis, a boy of twelve or fourteen, with the handle of a frying-pan in one hand and a spoon in the other, drinking down mouthful after mouthful of the melted fat left after fry- ing pork, and, on my silently looking at him, was met by a delighted smile and a smack of his lips, accom- panied by a rapturous assurance of, 'Ah! it slips good.' Fat, however, is only another name for carbon, or, it may be said, charcoal, and carbon is needed in large quantities to maintain an adequate amount of '^^ * // slips good! 191 animal heat in the inhabitants of cold climates, and to this must be attributed their craving for grossly fat food. Captain Cochrane, in his * Pedestrian Tour to Behring's Straits,' shows us that poor Louis Le Blanc was in this respect far outdone by the Siberian tribes living near the Arctic Ocean, who relished nothing more than a tallow candle, and would prolong the enjoyment of one by pulling the wick, once and again, through their half-closed teeth, that no particle of the grease might be lost. Indeed, my friend Captain L told me that, in the Arctic regions, his men had acquired a similar relish for ' moulds ' and * dips,' and could eat a candle as if it had been sugar-stick. The Esquimaux, as we all know, live on the nauseous blubber of the whale, cutting it off in long strips, which, Sydney Smith facetiously avers, they hold over them by the one hand and guide down by the other, till full to the mouth, when they cut it off at the lips. The quantity of butcher's meat eaten by every one during winter in Canada is astonishing. Even the bush people, who when living in England hardly ever saw it, eat it vora- ciously three times a-day, with a liberal allowance of grease each time. "What oceans of mutton-oil I have seen floating round chops, in some of their houses ! How often have I declined the offer of three or four table-spoonfuls of pork-oil, as * gravy ' or * sauce ' to the pork itself ! Yet it * slips good,' apparently, with the country population generally. The quantity of butter these good folks consume is no less liberal. On the •\ • 1 ■»t' '1 : • i h ;i ■ ;l^ ^ -.u y \k \ 192 Squatters, table of a poor log-house they never think of putting clown a lump weighing less than a pound, at which every one hacks as he likes with his own knife. But they need it all, and it is a mercy they have it, to help them to withstand the effects of extreme cold and hard work. The poorer classes in towns, who have no land on which to raise animal food, and little money with which to buy it, must suffer very severely. There were a few * squatters ' along the river here and there — that is, men who had settled on spots of the wilderness without having bought them, or having acquired any legal rights, but were content to use them while undisturbed in possession, and to leave their clearings when owners came forward. They are always, in such cases, allowed the value of their im- provements, and as, meanwhile, they live entirely rent free, their position is far from wholly disadvantageous. In the early days of the colony, indeed, there was no other plan. The few first comers could hardly be any- thing but squatters, as the country was all alike an un- cleared wilderness, and there was no inducement to pay money for any one spot, had they possessed the means. Some of the French families in our neigh- bourhood had been settled on the same farm for generations, and had at last actually bought their homesteads at the nominal price demanded by govern- ment ; but the squatters were not yet extinct, though they might at one time have had their choice of the richest soil at something like fourpepce an acre. A Sauattcrs. 193 friend of mine told me that within a period of about thirty years he had seen land sold again and again at no higher price. On the same lot as that which boasted the Catholic chapel, one — a lonely survivor of the class — had taken up his abode, many years before our time, building a log-house for himself on the smallest possible scale, a fev/ )'ards from the river. How he could live in such a place seemed strange. It was not more than some ten or twelve feet in length and the upper part of it was used as his barn. TIere, all alone, poor Papineau had lived — no one I ever met could tell how long. There was no house in sight ; no one ever seemed to go near him, nor did he ever visit any neighbour. He was his own cook, house- keeper, washerwoman, farm-labourer, everything. 1 often wish I had tried to find out more about him. We used, when we passed along the river edge, to see him mowing his patch of hay for his cow, or weeding his plot of tobacco, for he grew what he required for his own use of this as of other things ; and he was always the same silent, harmless hermit of the woods. It was a strange kind of life to lead. How different from that of a Londoner, or the life of the inhabitant of any large community ! Yet he must surely have been contented, otherwise he would have left it and gone where he could have found some society. m W I i i '! I \ ' i I I I \\\ 13 104 CHAPTER XII. Bush magistrates— Indian forest guides — Senses quickened by necessity — Breaking up of the ice — Depth of the frost — A grave in winter — A ball — A holiday coat. [|N those days our local dignitaries were as primitive as the country itself. On the river, indeed, the magistrates were men of education, but in the bush the majorit}' possessed no qualifications for acting the part of jus- tices. One of them had the misfortune one winter to have a favourite dog killed by some mischievous person, and feeling excessively indignant at the loss, boldly . announced that he was prepared to pay a reward to any party who would give such information especting the offender as should lead to his convic- tion. The wording and spelling of this proclamation were alike remarkable. It ran thus : * Whereas sum nutrishus vilain or vilains has killed my dog Seesur, I ereby ofer a reward of five dolars to any one that will mak none the ofender or ofenders.' He never got any benefit from his efforts, but the document, in his own handwriting, hung for a long time on the wail of Indian Forest Guides. 195 is the next tavern, where all coukl see it, and not a lew laugh at its peculiarities. I was much struck by an instance, wliich a long journey, about this time, through the woods, gave, of the wonderful faculty possessed by the Indians in going straight from point to point across the thickest forest, where there is apparently nothing to direct their course. Having occasion to return nearly twenty miles from a back township to whicli tiie ryads had not yet been opened, and not liking to take the circuit necessary if I desired to find others, I thought myself fortunate in meeting with an Indian, Avho for a small reward offered to take me home by the nearest route. When I asked him how he guided himself, he could say very little, but hinted in his broken English about one side of the trees being rougher than the other, though I could detect little or no difference on most of them. If it had been in Nova Scotia, I could have understood his reasoning, for there the side of the trees towards tlie north is generally hung with a long grey beard of moss, from the constant moisture of the climate ; but in Canada it would take very sharp eyes to tell which was the northern and which the other sides from any outward sign. They must have something more to guide them, I think, though what it is I cannot conceive. The senses become wonderfully acute when called into extra- ordinary service. I have read of prisoners in dark dungeons who got at last to be able to see the spiders u- ' f . 1 1 96 Senses quickened by Necessity. moving about in their webs in the corners of their cells ; and blind people often attain such a wonderful delicacy of touch as to be able to detect things by difterences so slight as to be imperceptible by others. The facility with which they read the books prepared for them with raised letters, by simply passing their fiiigeis over the surfaces, is well known. The sailor can discern the appearance of distant land, or the Arab the approach of a camel over the desert, when others would suspect neither. An Indian can smell the fire of a * camp,' as they call the place where a l)arty rests for the night, when a European can detect nothing. There may, therefore, be something which can be noticed on the trees, by those who pass their whole lives among them, which others are unable to discover. The Intlians derive a great advantage from the skill they possess in tracking the footsteps of men or animals over all sorts of ground and among dry leaves. This faculty they are enabled to acquire owing to the fact that the forests in North America are generally open enough underneath to offer easy l)assage ; and moreover, that the soil is little more on the surface than a carpet of rotten wood and decaying leaves, which easily receives the impression of foot- steps, and retains it for a le.igth of time. The moss on the lallen trees is another great help in tracking the course of either man or beast through the forest ; for neither the one nor the other can well make their way over them without nibbing off portions here and Breaking up of the Ice. ^97 I"' there. Nor is the mere fact of the passage in a par- ticular direction all that an Indian can detect from the traces on the soil or vegetation. They reason acutely from things which others would overlook, and some- times surprise one as much by the minute and yet correct conclusions they draw respecting what they have not seen, as the Arab did the Cadi of Bagdad when he described a camel and its load which had passed, and whose track he had seen ; maintaining that the camel was lame of a foot — because he had noticed a difference in the length of the steps ; that it wanted a tooth, because the herbage it had cropped had a piece left in the middle of each bite ; and, also, that the load consisted of honey on one side and ghee on the other, because he had noticed drops of each on the path as he went along. My Indian made no hesitation at any part of our journey, keepmg as straight as possible, and yet he was forced perpetually to wind and turn round trees standing directly in our path, and to vault over fallen logs, which he did with a skill that I in vain tried to imitate. About the beginning of April the ice in the river was getting very watery, the strength of the sun melting the surface till it lay covered with pools in every direction. Yet people persisted in crossing, long after I should have thought it dangerous in the extreme. It seemed as if it would hold together for a long time yet, but the heat was silently doing its work on it, and bringing the hour of its final disap- !?■' 198 Breaking up of the Ice. !.'. % VA ' pearance every moment nearer. It had become a wearisome sight when looked at day after day for months, and we all longed for the open river once more. At last, about the sixteenth of the month, on rising in the morning, to our delight, the whole sur- face of the ice was seen to be broken to pieces. A strong wind which had been blowing through the night had caused such a motion in the water as to split up into fragments the now-weakened sheet that bound it. It was a wonderfully beautiful sight to look at the bright blue water sparkling once more in the light, as if in resdess gladness after its long imprison- ment, the richness of its colour contrasting strikingly with the whiteness of the ice which floated in snowy floes to the south. At first there was only the broken covering of the river, but, very soon, immense quan- tities of ice came sailing down from the Upper Lakes, jammed together one piece on another, in immense heaps, in every variety of confusion, the upturned edges fringed with prismatic colours. I found that the preparation for this grand upbreaking had been much more complete than I had suspected, from looking at it from a distance ; the whole of what had appeared quite solid having been so aftected by the sun that, whichever way you looked at it, long rows of air-bubbles showed themselves through it, showing that there was little power left in it to resist any outward force. The final rupture, though appar- endy so sudden, had been in fact steadily progressing, V ., Depth of the Frost. 199 long , ismg, until, at last, the night's storm had been sufficient to sweep away in an hour what hatl previously stood the wildest rage of winter. I have often, since, thought that it gave a very good illustration of the gradually increasing influence of all efforts for good, and of their certain ultimate triumph — each day's faithful work doing so much towards it, though the progress may for long be imperceptible, until at last, when we hardly expect it, the opposing forces give way,- as it were, at once, and forthwith leave only a scattered and retreating wreck behind. Gradual preparation, and apparently sudden results, are the law in all things. The Reformation, though accomplished as if at a blow, had been silently made possible through long previous generations ; and when the idolaters in Tahiti threw away their hideous gods, the salutary change was only effected by the long-continued labours of faithful missionaries for many years before — labours, which, to many, must, at the time, have seemed fruit- less and vain. The depth to which the frost had penetrated the ground was amazing. I had already seen proof of its being pretty deep, on the occasion of a grave having to be dug in a little spot of ground attached to a chapel at some distance from us, for the burial of a poor neighbour's wife who had died. The ground Avas deeply covered with snow, whicli had to be cleared away before they could begin to dig the grave, and the soil was then found to be so hard that 200 A Grave in Winter. \^ii ■; it had to be broken up with pickaxes. Even in that earlier part of the winter the frost was nearly two feet deep, and it was a touching thing to see the frozen lumps of earth which had to be thrown down on the coffin. Anything like beating the grave smooth, or shaping it into the humble mound which is so familiar to us at home, as the token of a form like our own lying beneath, was impossible; there could only be a rough approach to it till spring should come to loosen the iron-bound earth. Strangely enough, there were two funerals from the same household within the same month, and the two graves were made side by side. The mother had died just as she was about to start for the house of her daughter-in- law who was ailing, a hundred and twenty miles off, and the object of her beautiful tenderness had herself died before the same month had expired, leaving it as her last wish that she should be laid beside her friend who had departed so lately. It was now the depth of winter — the Arctic cold made everything like rock — the sleighing was at its best, and thus the journey was made comparatively easy. Laying the coffin in a long sleigh and covering it with straw, and taking a woman with him to carry a young infant to his friends to nurse, the husband set out with his ghastly load. There was no fear of delaying the burial too long, for the corpse was frozen stiff, and might have been kept above-ground for weeks without the risk of its thawing. When I used to Depth of the Frost. 201 pass afterwards in summer time, the two graves, which were the first in the burial-ground, wore a more cheerful aspect than they had done at first ; the long beautiful grass waving softly over them, and wild flowers, borne thither by the winds or by birds, mingling their rich colours with the shades of green around. I think the soil must eventually have been frozen at least a yard down, if we may judge by its effects. Great gate-posts were heaved up by the expansion of the earth, when the thaw turned the ice into water ; for, though ice is lighter than water, it forms a solid mass, whereas the swelling moisture pushes the par- ticles of earth apart. I have seen houses and walls cracked from top to bottom, and fences thrown down, from the same cause; indeed, it is one of the regu- larly recurring troubles of a Canadian farmer's year. If anything is to stand permanently, the foundations must be sunk below the reach of the frost. It is very much better, however, in Canada than in the icy wilderness to the north of it. Round Hudson's Bay the soil never thaws completely, so that if you thrust a pole into the earth in the warm season, you may feel the frozen ground a few feet beneath. It is wonderful that any vegetation can grow under sucli circumstances, but the heat of the sun is so great that, even over the everlasting ice-bed, some crops can be raised in the short fiery summer. Indeed, even on the edge of the great Arctic Ocean, along W 1 IP t i, i h I I ' II 202 A Ball. V i! I • i\ Ft ft m ■I ,1 -if .j, ^;i liiiii .H the coasts of Siberia, and on some spots of the American shore, the earth, brought down by rivers and strewn by their floods over the liills of ice, is bright with vegetation for a short part of each year — in this respect not unlike stony and cold natures which have yet, over their unmelting hardness, an efflorescence of good — the skin of virtue spread, as old .Thomas Fuller says, like a mask over the face of vice. During the winter a great ball was given across the river, in a large barn, which had been cleared for the purpose, the price of the tickets being fixed at a dollar, which included an abundant supper. It was intimated, however, that those who had no money might pay in 'dicker' — a Yankee word for barter; a bundle of shingles, a certain number of eggs, or so much weight of butter, being held equivalent to the money, and securing a ticket. I was not present myself, never having much approved of these mixed parties, but the young folks round were in a great state of excitement about it, some of them coming as far as fifteen miles to attend it. They w^nt past in sleigh loads, dashing over the ice on the river as if it had been solid ground. The girls were, of course, in the height of fashion, as they understood it ; some of them exposing themselves in ridiculously light clothing for the terrible season of the year, in the belief, no doubt, that it made them look the nicer. Fashions in those days did not travel fast, and what T " A Holiday Coal. '> 203 was in its full glory on the river had been well nigh forgotten where it took its rise, like the famous Steen- kirk stock, of which Addison says that it took eleven years to travel from London to Newcastle. The taste shown was often very praiseworthy, but some- times, it must be admitted, a litde out of the way. I have seen girls with checked or figured white muslin dresses, wearing a black petticoat underneath to show off the beauties of the pattern ; and I knew of one case where a young woman, who was en- grossed in the awful business of buying her wedding dress, could get nothing to please her until she chanced to see, hanging up, a great white window curtain, with birds and flowers all over it, which she instantly pronounced to be the very thing she wanted, and took home in triumph ! There was one gen- tleman's coat on the river which might have formed a curiosity in a museum, as a relic of days gone by. The collar stood up round the ears in such a great roll that the shoulders and head seemed set on each other, and, as to the tails, they crossed each other like a marten's wings, somewhere about the knees. But it was in a good state of preservation, and, for aught I know, may be the holiday pride of its owner to this hour. It took a week or two for the last fragments of ice to disappear from the river, fresh floes coming down day after day from the lakes beyond, where spring sets in later. As they floated past I often used to I 1 :l ill i ' t k \l I 204 IF/iy Ice floats. think what a mercy it was that, while water gets heavier as it grows cold, until it comes to the freezing- point, it becomes lighter the moment it begins to frer-ze, and thus rises to the surface, to form ice there, instead of at the bottom. If it continued to get heavier after it froze, or if it continued as heavy after, as it was immediately before, the rivers and lakes would speedily become solid masses of ice, which could by no possibility be melted. The arrangement by which this is avoided, is a remarkable illustration of the Divine wisdom, and a striking proof of the contrivance and design which is in all God's works. 20^ ;i ' CHAPTER XIII. 'A^ild leeks — Spring birds — Wilson's poem on the bluc-bird — Downy woodpeckers — Passenger pigeons — Their numbers — Roosting places— The frogs — Bull frogs— Tree frogs ^^ I' lying sfjuirrels. Y the first of May the fields were beginning to put on their spring beauty. But in Canada, where vegetation, once fairly started, makes a wonderfully rapid pro- gress, it is not like that of England, where spring comes down, as the poet tells us — * Veiled in a shower ol shadowing roses,' and a long interval occurs between the first indications of returning warmth, and the fuller proof of it in the rejoicing green of the woods and earth. The wild leeks in the bush seemed to awaken from their winter's sleep earlier than most other things, as we found to our cost, by the cows eating them and spoiling their milk and butter, by the strong disagreeable taste. In fact, both were abominable for weeks together, until other attractions in vaccme diet had superseded those of the leeks. It was delightful to look at the runnels of crystal water wimpling down the furrows as the sun ' |i ■I l\ . .; f i 206 spring Birds. m I grew strong ; the tender grass beneath, and at each side, showing through the quivering flow hke a frame of emerald. The great buds of the chestnuts and those of other trees grew daily larger, and shone in the thick waterproof-coatings with which they had been protected through the winter. Small green snakes, too, began to glide about after their long torpidity ; the wild fowl reappeared in long flights high overhead, on their way to their breeding-places in the far north ; the reed-sparrows in their rich black plumage, with scarlet shoulders fading off to yellow ; the robin, resembling his English namesake only in the name, as he belongs to the family of thrushes in Canada ; the squirrels in their beautiful coats, with their great bushy tails and large eyes, stirring in every direction through the trees, and every little Avhile proclaiming their presence by a sound which I can only compare to the whirr of a broken watch-spring ; the frogs beginning to send up their thousand croaks from every standing pool — all things, indeed, in the animal and vegetable world showing signs of joy, heralded the flowery summer that was advancing towards us. The darling little blue-bird, the herald of spring, had already come to gladden us while the snow was yet on the ground, flitting about the barn and the fence-posts, and, after we had an orchard, about the apple-trees, of which it chiefly consisted. About the middle of March he and his mate might be seen visit- . ing the box in the garden, where he had kept house J Vi Is J lis Poem on tJie Blue-bird. 207 the year before, or, in places where the orchards were old, looking at the hole in the apple-tree where his family had lived in preceding summers. He had come to be ready for the first appearance of the insects on which chiefly he feeds, and, by killing whole myriads of which, he proves himself one of the best friends of the farmer. There is a poem of Alexander Wilson, tlie American ornithologist, about the blue-bird, which tells the whole story of a Canadian spring so admirably, and is so little known, that I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting part of it. * When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more, Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing, Tlie fishermen hauling their shad to the shore, And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steeering ; When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing, When glow the red maples, so fresh and so pleasing, Oh, then comes the blue-bird, tlie herald of spring, And hails with his warblings the charms of the season. Then loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring, Then warm glows the sunshine, and fine is the weather ; The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring, And spice-wood and sassafras budding together. O then to your gardens, ye house-wives, repair. Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure. The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air That all your hard toils will seem tndy a pleasure. * He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree. The red-flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms : He snaps up destroyers wherever they be, And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms ; ■ 1 '■ I i r , h f ' I i 2o8 Dozuny Woodpcck crs. He drafjs tlu vile grub from tlic corn he devours, The worms from their beds, where they riol and welter ; His son^' and his services freely are ours, And all that he asks is, in summer, a shelter. ' The plo.'.^liman is pleased when he tjleans i:i his train, No\7 fcarching the furrows, no\.' niuiuiti'i^; t.) tli.er him ; The j^anlcner dcli^jdits in his sweet, siinj.Ie strain, And lv.ans on his spade lo survey and to hear him ; The slow ling'rin!^' schoolboys forget tl'.cy'M be cliid, V.'h'ie gazinc; in'.ent as he w\arbies before 'en In mip.llc '>r sky-blue, and bosom sd red, 'I'hat cad; i!lt!e w^i.derer seems to adcr^ liini.' i W' The mention of the blue-bird's activity in destroy ing injects brings to my mind my old friends, the woodpeckers, once more. In John Courtenay's orchard, which was an old one, several of these birds built every season, hovering about the place the whole year, as they are among the very few Canadian birds that do not migrate. He showed me, one day, the nest of one of the species called ' Downy,' in an old apple-tree. A hole had been cut in the body of the tree, as round as if it had been marked out by a carpenter's compasses, about six or eight inches deep in a slanting direction, and then ten or twelve more perpendicularly, the top of it only large enough to let the parents in and out, but the bottom apparently quite roomy for the young family. As far as I could see, it was as smooth as a mar^ could have made it, and I was assured that it was the same in every part. It appears that th^se birds are as cunning as they Doijjiiy Woodpeckers. 209 are clever at this art, the two old ones regularly carry- ing out all the chips as they are made, and strew- ing them about at a considerable distance from tlie nest, so as to prevent suspicion of its i)rcsence. Six pure white eggs, laid on the smooth bottom of their curious abode, mark the number of eacli year's family, the female bird sitting closely on them wliile they are being hatched, her husband, meanwhile, busying himself in supplying her with choice grubs, that she may want for nothing in her voluntary ini- l)risonment. The little woodpeckers make tlicir first appearance about the middle of June, when one may see them climbing the bark of the tree as well as they can, as if practising before they finally set out in life for themselves. I had often wondered at the appearance of the bark in many of the apple and pear-trees, which seemed as if some one had fired charges of shot into them ; but it was long before I knew the real cause. It appears that it is the work of the woodpeckers, and many farmers consequently think the poor birds highly injurious to their or- ciiards. But there are no real grounds for such an opinion, for no mischief is done by these punctures, numerous though they be. I have always remarked tliat the trees which were perforated most seemed most thriving, no doubt because the birds had destroyed the insects which otherwise would have injured them. The autumn and winter is the great time for their operations, and it is precisely the time 14 1^ I H ^r ' (J \ t \\ s: ill ' no Doiuiiy Woodpeckers. ' % A when the preservation of the fruit, in tlie coming summer, can be best secured. Curious as it may seem that such a rickUing of the bark can be bene- ficial to the tree, it evidently is so. From the ground to where the branches fork off there is often hardly an inch of the bark which does not bear the mark of some grubhunt, and sometimes eight or ten of them. might be covered by a penny. Farmers, how- ever, rarely philosophize, and no wonder that in this case they regard as prejudicial what is really a benefit. But, on the other hand, they are correct enough as to the habits of some of the woodpeckers, for greater thieves than the red-headed ones, at some seasons, can hardly be found. The little rascals devour fruit of all kinds as it ripens, completely stripping the trees, if permitted. In fact, they have a liking for all good things, they are sure to pick the finest strawberries from your beds, and have no less relish for apples, peaches, cherries, plums, and pears ; Indian corn, also, is a favourite dish with them, while it is still milky. Nor do these little plagues keep to vegetable diet exclusively; the eggs in the nests of small birds are never passed by in their search for delicacies. One can't wonder, therefore, that, with such plundering propensities, they should lose their lives pretty often. The flocks of pigeons that come in the early spring are wonderful. They fly together in bodies of many thousands, perching, as close as they can settle, mtHtSmmt^mamiiim Passenger Piocons. 21 r on the trees wlicn they alight, or covering the ground over large spaces when feeding. The first tidings of their approach is the signal for every available gun to be brought into requisition, at once to procure a sup- ply of fresh food, and to protect the crops on the fields, which the i)igeons would utterly destroy if they were allowed. It is singular how little sense, or per- haps fear, such usually timid birds have when col- lected together in numbers. 1 have heard of one man who was out shooting them, and had crept' close to one flock, when their leaders took a flmcy to fly directly over him, almost close to the ground, to his no small terror. Thousands brushed past him so close as to make him alarmed for his eyes ; and the stream still kept pouring on after he had discharged his bar- rels right and left into it, until nothing remained but to throw himself on his face till the whole had flown over him. They do not, however, come to any part of Canada with which I am acquainted in such amazing numbers as are said by Wilson and Audubon to visit the Western United States. The latter naturalist left his house at Henderson, on the Ohio, in the autumn of 1813, on his way to Louisville, and on passing the Barrens, a few miles beyond Hardensburgh, observed the pigeons flying from north-east to south-west in such numbers, that he thought he would try to calcu- late how many there really were. Dismounting, and seating himself on a knoll, he began making a dot in his note-book for every flock that passed, but in a ■ ■ rt I 1 V i i ? 2 I 1 Their A^iif)i!>rrs. ' -■' ■' i- ' ' i li 11 (i short timo \\m\ to give up tho atUinpt, ns ho had nltvady init down a hiniihcd aiul sixty ihivo in twonly- onc minutes, anil they still poiiii'il on \\\ countless nniltitndes. Tlie air was literally tUled with pim-ons ; the light of noon-day was obsi ured as if by an eclipse, and the continued bu/z of wings produced an inclin;i tion to drowsiness. When he reached l.ouisvilie, a distance of fifty-five miles, the pigeons were still pass- ing in unabated numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession, lie calculated that, if two pigeons were allowed for each sipiare )ard, the num- ber in a single ilock — and that not a large one, ex- tending one mile in breadth and a hundred and eiglity in length —could not be less than one billion, one hundred and fifteen millions, one hinulred and thirty- six thousand ! The food recjuireil for such a count- less host passes our power to realize clearly, for, at half a pint a day, which is hardly as much as a i>igeon consumes, they would eat, in a single day, eight millions, seven hundred and twelve thousand bushels. 'Jo get such supplies from cultivated fields would, of course, be impossible, and it is fortunate that they hardly ever attempt it, their principal support being the vast quantities of beech-mast which the unlimited expanse of unbroken forest supplies. A curious fact respecting them is that they have fixed roosting-places, from which no disturbance ap- pears able to drive them, and to these they resort night by night, however for they may have to fly to J\0()s/ij/<^ piiiics, 2 '.5 oldain fotxl on the icliiriiing rocured, huge piles of them lying on ea« h side of their seats. Many trees two feet in diameter were broken off at no great distance from the ground by the weight of the multitudes that had lighted on them ; and huge branches had given way, as if the forest had been svvej)t by a tornado. As the hour of their arrival approached, every [)reparation was made to receive them : iron pots, containing sulphur, torches of pine-knots, poles, and guns, being got ready for use the moment they came. Shortly after sunset the cry arose that they were come at last. The noise they made, though yet distant, was like that of a hard gale at sea, when it passes through the rigging of a closely- reefed vessel. Thousands were soon knocked down by the polcmen ; the birds continued to pour in ; the fires were lighted ; and a magnificent as well as won- derful and almost terrifying sight presented itself. The pigeons, arriving by thousands, alighted every- where, one above another, until solid masses as large ■ ti I (' ' i '. tl] 214 Roosting- places. as hogsheads were formed on the branches all round. Here and there the perches gave way, and falling on the ground with a crash, destroyed hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every spot was loaded. The pigeons were constantly coming, and it was past midnight before he jjerceived a decrease in their number. Before dayliglit they had begun again to move off, and by sunrise all were gone. This is Audubon's account. I myself have killed thirteen at a shot, fired at a venture into a flock ; and my sister Margaret killed two one day by simply throwing up a stick she had in her hand as they swept past at a point where we had told her to stand, in order to frighten them into the open ground, that we might have a better chance of shooting them. I have seen bagfuls of them that had been killed by no more formidable weapons than poles swung right and left at them as they flew close past. The rate at which they fly is wonderful, and has been computed at about a mile a minute, at which rate they keep on for hours together, darting forward with rapid beats of their wings very much as our ordinary ^ igeons do. The frogs were as great a source of amusement to us as the pigeons were of excitement. Wherever tliere was a s;>ot of water, thence, by night and day, came their chorus, the double bass of the bull-frogs striking in every now and then amidst the inde- scribable piping "of the multitudes of their smaller M Bull Frogs, 215 brethren. It is very difficult to catch a sight of these bassoon performers, as they spring into the water at the slightest approach of danger ; yet you may now and then come on them basking at the side of a pond or streamlet, their great goggle eyes and black skin making them look very grotesque. They are great thieves in their own proper element, many a duckling vanishing from its mother's side by a sudden snap of some one of these solemn gentlemen below. -They are a hungry race, always ready apparently for what they can get, and making short work with small fishes, all kinds of small reptiles, and even, I beheve, the lesser kinds of snakes, when they can get them. These fellows are the giants of the frog tribes, and portly gentlemen withal, some of them weighing very nearly a pound. The shrill croak of the other frogs is like nothing else that I ever heard : it is a sort of trill of two or three notes, as if coming through water, and it rises from so many throats at once that it may be said never for a moment to cease. There is a kind of frog which lives on the branches of trees, catching the insects on the leaves — a beautiful little creature, of so nicely shaded a green that it is almost impossible to detect it even when you are close to it. Henry and I were one day at work in the early summer near a young maple, in the back part of the farm, and could hardly keep up conversation for the hissing trill of a number of them on it; but though the tree was so near us we could not, by all our looking, discover any 2l6 Tree Frogs. : '.« mms of the invisible minstrels. At last the thing became so ludicrous that we determined, if possible, to get a sight of one ; and as the lowei branches began at about our own height, one of us went to the one side, and the other to the other, to watch. Trill — trill — bubble — bubble — bubble — rose all around us, but no other signs of the warblers. We looked and laughed, laughed and loci ed again ; the sound was within a yard of us, yet not. could be seen. When almost giving up, however, 1 chanced to look exactly on the spot where one was making his little throat swell to get out another set of notes, and the rise and fall of its breast at once discovered its presence. Henry was at my side in a moment, and we could both see it plainly enough of course, when our eyes had once fairly distinguished it from the green around. It con- tinued to sit unmoved on its leaf, and we did not dis- turb it. One morning we came upon a beautiful little creature which had been killed by some means, and lay in the yard near the barn. It was evidently a sc^uirrel, but differed from the ordinary species in one curious particular. Instead of having its legs free like those of other squirrels, a long stretch of fur extended from the front to the back legs so as to form something like wrings when spread out. It was a flying squirrel, a kind not so common as the others, and coming out mostly by night. These extraordinary appendages at their sides are used by them to sustain Flying Sipiirvcls. 21 them in enormous leaps which tlicy make from branch to branch, or from one tree to another. Trusting to them they dart hither and thither with wonderful swiftness ; indeed, it is hard for the eye to follow their movements. What most struck me in this unusual development was the evident approach it made towards the characteristic of birds, being as it were a link bet^veen the form of an ordinary quadruped and that of a bat, and standing in the same relation to the wing of the latter as that does to the wing of a bird. It is singular how one class of creatures merges into another in every department of animal life. Indeed, it is puzzling at times to distinguish between vegetable and animal structures where the confines of the two kingdoms join, as the word zoophyte, which really means ' a living plant,' sufficiently shows. Then there is a caterpillar in New Zealand out of whose back, at a certain stage of its growth, springs a kind of fungus, which gradually drinks up the whole juices of the insect and destroys it; but this is not so much an approximation of two different orders as an accidental union. There are, however, many cases of interlink - ing in the different ' families ' into which life is divided, the study of which is exceedingly curious and intercst- ii i III % mg. 2:S CHAPTER XIV. Uur spring crops — Indian corn — Pumpkins — Melons — Fniits— Wild Flowers. ml in jHE first thing we thought of when the spring had fairly set in was to get spring wheat, potatoes, Indian corn, pumpkins, oats, a!"!d other crops into the ground. Our potatoes were managed in a very primitive way, in a patch of newly-cleared ground, the surface of which, with a good deal more, we had to burn off before it could be tilled. A heavy hoe was the only implement used, a stroke or two with it sufficing to make a hole for the potato cuttings, and two or three more to drag the earth over them, so as to form a * hill.' These we made at about eighteen inches apart, putting three or four pumpkin seeds in every third hill of the alternate rows. The Indian com was planted in the same way, in hills more than a yard apart, pumpkin seeds being put in with it also. It is my favourite of all the beautiful plants of Canada. A field of it, when at its finest, is, I think, as charming a sight as could well invite the eye. Rising higher than the height of a man, its great jointed stems are crested St-—. " Puvipkins. 219 at the top by a long waving plume of purple, while from the upper end of each head of the grain there waves a long tassel resembling pale green silk. It is grown to a large extent in Canada, but it is most culti- vated in the Western United States, many farmers on the prairies there growing a great many acres of it. It is used in many ways. When still unripe it is full of delicious milky juice, which makes it a delicacy for the table when boiled. The ripe corn makes excellent meal for cakes, &c., and is the best food for pigs or poultry, while the stalks make excellent fodder for cattle. The poor Indians grow a little corn when they grow nothing else. You may see the long strings of ears plaited together by the tough wrappings round each, and hung along poles round their wigwams to dry for winter use. They have been in possession of it no one can tell how long. When the Alay Flower anchored, with the Pilgrim Fathers, at Plymouth Bay, in Massachusetts, in 1620, they found hoards of it buried for safety in the woods around, the Indians having taken this plan to conceal it from them. The size of the pumpkins is sometimes enormous. I have known them so large that one would fill a wheelbarrow, and used often to think of a piece of rhyme I learned when a boy, in which it was pointed out what a mercy it was that they grew on the ground rather than aloft, acorns being quite heavy enough in windy weather.* They are used in great quantities * Le Gland et la Citrouille : Fables de La Fontatpc^ B. ix. 4. ti-1 I \ I i 220 Melons, M for ' pumpkin pie/ as the Canadians call it — a prepara- tion of sweetened pumpkin spread over paste. They use them in this way not only while fresh, but cut a great many into thin slices and dry them, that they may have this dessert in winter as well as summer. They are excellent food for pigs and cattle when broken into manageable pieces for them. I don't think anything grew with us better than beets and carrots, the latter especially. A farmer in our neigli- bourhood, who was partial to their growth for the sake of his horses and cattle, beat us, however, in the quantity raised on a given space, having actually gathered at the rate of thirteen hundred bushels per acre of carrots. We had a can-ot show some years after in the neighbouring township, at which this fact was stated, and its accuracy fairly established by the fact of others having gathered at the rate of as many as eleven hundred bushels per acre. I remember the meeting chiefly from the assertion of an Irishman pre- sent, who would not allow that anything in Canada could surpass its counterpart in his native island, and maintained that these carrots were certainly very good, but that they were nothing to one which was grown near Cork, which was no less than eight feet nine inches in length ! A variety of melons formed one of the novelties we grew after the first season. We had nothing to do but put them in the ground and keep them free from weeds, when they began to ' run ' — as they did. Fruits. far and near, over the ground. It was an easy way to get a luxury, for some of them are very delicious, and all are very refreshing in the sultry heat of summer. They grow in every part of Canada in great luxuriance, and witliout anything like a pre- paration of the soil. Indeed, I once saw a great fellow of an Indian planting some, which would doubtless grow well enough, with his toes — pushing aside earth enough to receive the seeds, and then, with another motion of his foot, covering them up. Cucumbers grew in surprising numbers from a very small quantity of seed, and we had a castor-oil plant and some plants of red pepper before our doors. We had not very much time at first to attend to a vege- table garden, and therefore contented ourselves with a limited range of that kind of comforts, but it was not the fault of the soil or climate, for in no place of which I know do the various bounties of the garden grow more freely than in Canada. Cabbages, cauli- flower, brocoli, peas, French beans, spinach, onions, turnips, carrots, parsnips, radishes, lettuces, beet, asparagus, celery, rhubarb, tomatoes, cucumbers, and I know not what else, need only to be sown or planted to yield a most bountiful return. As to fruits, Ave had, for years, to buy all we used, or to gather it in the woods, but it was very cheap when bought, and easily procured when gathered. Apples of a size and flavour almost peculiar to America, pears, plums, cherries, raspberries, currantr.. \ 222 Fr tills. II and strawberries grow everywhere in amazing abund- ance. Peaches of the sunniest beauty and most deHcate flavour are at times in some districts ahnost as plentiful as potatoes ; but we never managed to get any from our orchard, want of knowledge on our part having spoiled our first trees, which we never afterwards exchanged for others. But on the Niagara River I have known them sell for a shilling a buslicl, an'd every labourer you met would be devouring them by the half-dozen. A gentlernan within a few miles of us took a fancy to cultivate grapes as ex- tensively as he could in the open air, and succeeded so well that he told me before I left that he had sold a year's crop for about a hundred pounds. If we had had as much shrewdness as we ought to have hrd, we should have begun the culture of fruit rather than of mere farm produce, and I feel sure it would have paid us far better. But people coming fresh to a country take a long time to learn what is best for them to do, and when they have learned, have too often no sufficient means of turning to it, or, i^erhaps, no leisure, while many, through disap- pointed hopes, lose their spirit and energy. Tlie wild fruits we found to be as various as the cultivated kinds, and some of them were very good. The wild cherries were abundant in our bush, and did excellently for preserves. Gooseberries, small, with a rough prickly skin and of a poor flavour, were JJ^iid Flowers, 223 often brought by the Indians to barter for pork or Hour. Raspberries and strawberries covered the open places at the roadsides, and along the banks of ' creeks ; ' and whortleberries and blue berries, black and red currants, juniper berries, plums, and hazel nuts, were never far distant. We used to gather large quantities ourselves, and the Indians were constantly coming with pailfuls in the season. It is one of the beneficent arrangements of Providence tha't, in a climate so exceedingly hot in summer, there should be such a profusion of fruits and vegetables within the leach of all, adding not only to comfort but dif- fusing enjoyment, and exerting, also, a salutary influ- ence upon health. What shall I say of the wild flowers which burst out as the year advanced? In open places, tlie woods were well-nigh carpeted with them, and clear- ings that had, for whatever reason, been for a time abandoned, soon showed like gardens with tlieir varied colours. The scarlet lobelia, the blue luj)in, gentian, columbine, violets in countless variety, honey- suckles flinging their fragrant flowers in long ''-esses from the trees, campanula, harebell, balsams, asters, calceolarias, the snowy lily of the valley, and clouds of wild roses, are only a few from the list. Varieties of mint, with beautiful flowers, adorned the sides of streams or the open meadows, and, resting in a float- ing meadow of its own green leaves, on the still water H 2 24 The ^Bitter Si^rcL' of tlie river bends, or of the creeks, whole strclchcs of the great white water-lily rose and fell with every gende undulation. There was a berry, also, the ' bitter sweet,' wliich was, in the later part of the year, as pretty as any ll(jwer. At the end of each of the delicate twigs on which it grew, it hung in clusters, which, whil<". un- ripu, were of the richest orange ; but, after a time, this covering opened into four golden points and showed. in the centre, a bright scarlet berry. 22^ CHAPTER XV. The Indians— Wigwams— Dress— Can the Indians be civilized? — Their past decay as a race— Alleged innocence ol' savage life — Narrative of Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary. - EFORE coming to America we had read a great deal about the Indians, and were most anxious to see them. I remember asking a lady from Canada if she was not afraid of them, and was astonished when she smiled at the question. Our minds had been filled in childhood with stories about the Mohawks, and Hu- rons, and other savage nations ; how they rushed on the houses of settlers at the dead of night, and, after burning their houses, killed and scalped the men, and drove the women and children into captivity in the woods. Their painted faces, wild feathered dresses, and terrible war-cry had become quite familiar to our heated fancies ; and we were by no means sure we should not have to endure too close an acquaintance with them when we became settlers in their country. The terrible story on which Campbell's beautiful poem, 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' is founded, was re- garded as a sample of what we had to fear in pur day IS H .if . * i II * '4 i. h ' l4 . Ill 226 Indian Wigzvams. in Canada. Moreover, the romantic accounts of In- dian warriors in the novels of Cooper, and in tlie writings of travellers, helped to increase both our curiosity and dread, and we were all most anxious to see the representatives of the red men in our own settlement, notwithstanding our extravagant fear of them. We were not long left to think what tliey were like, however; for it so happened that there was an Indian settlement on land reserved for them along the river a few miles above us, and odd families ever and anon pitched their wigAvams in the bush close to us. The first time they did so, we all went out eager to see them at once, but never were ridiculous high-flown notions doomed to meet a more thorough disappointment. They were encamped on the sloping bank of the creek, for it was beautiful summer weather, two or three wigwams rising under the shade of a fine oak which stretched high over- head. The wigwams themselves were simply sheets of the bark of the birch and bass-trees, laid against a slight framework of poles inside, and sloping in- wards like a cone, with a hole at the top. An open space served for an entrance, a loose sheet of bark, at the side, standing ready to do duty as a door, if required. I have seen them of different shapes, but they are generally round, though a few show the fancy of their owners by resembling the sloping roof of a house laid on the ground, with the entry at one end. Bark is the common material ; but in the Indian Wigwams. 227 woods on the St Clair river I once saw a family en- sconced below some yards of white cotton, stretched over two or three rods ; and near Halifax, in Nova Scotia, in winter, I noticed some wigwams made of loose broken outside slabs of logs, which the inmates had laboriously got together. In this last miserable hovel, by the way, in the midst of deep snow, with the wind whistling through it in every direction, and the thermometer below zero, lay a sick squaw .and a young infant, on some straw and old blankets, to get well the best way she could. What she must have suffered from the cold can hardly be conceived. No wonder so many die of consumption. In the group at the wigwams, as we drew near, we could see there were both men, women, and children — the men and women ornamented with great flat silver earrings, and all, including the children, bare- headed. Their hair was of jet black, and quite straight, and the men had neither beards nor whis- kers. Both sexes wore their hair long, some of them plaiting it up in various ways. Their colour was like that of a brown dried leaf, th'^ir cheek-bones high and wide apart; their moutli generally large, and their eyes smaller than ours ; and we noticed that they all had good teeth. This is not, however, an invariable characteristic, for sometimes they sufifer from their decay, like Europeans, and the doctor once told me how an Indian had waited for him at the side of the road, and, when he came up, 1 ;iti III m w ■-. i i: II it! '' ^ t 228 Indian Dress, had made signs of pain from toothache, and of his wish that the tooth should be removed, which Avas forthwith done, the sufferer departing in great glee at the thought of his deliverance. * The next day,' the doctor added, ' the poor fellow showed his gratitude by wait- ing for me at the same place with a fine stone pipe- head, which he had just cut, and which he handed to me with a grunt of goodwill as 1 came up.' The dress of the women consisted of a cotton jacket, a short petticoat of cloth, with leggings of cloth underneath, which fitted tightly. Those who were doing nothing had a blanket loosely thrown over them, though it was then hot enough to do without almost any clothing. The dress of the men varied, from the merest mockery of clothing to the full suit of a cotton shirt and a pair of long leather or cloth lejggings. One of them, a great strapping man, gave my sisters a great fright, shortly after, by walking into the house as noiselessly as a cat, and stalking up to the fire for a light to his pipe, with nothing on him but a cotton shirt. Pulling out a piece of burning wood and kindling his pipe, he sat down on a chair beside them to enjoy a smoke, without ever saying a word, and went off, when he had finished, with equal silence. The little children were naked either altogether, or with the exception of a piece of cotton round their loins ; and the babies, of which there are always some in every Indian encampment, peered out with their bright black beads of eyes from papooses, either hung up on a forked pole or resting 1* *i ■ M Indian Babies, 229 against a tree. These * papooses ' were quite a novelty to us. They were simply a flat board a little longer than the infant, with a bow of hickory bent in an arcli over the upper end, to protect the head, and some strings at the sides to tie the little creature safely. There it lay or stood, with abundant wrappings round it, but with its legs and arms in hopeless confinement, its little eyes and thin trembling lips alone telling the story of its tender age. To lift it was like taking hold of a fiddle, only you could hardly hurt it so easily as you might the instrument. Not a cry was to be heard, for Indian babies seem always good, and nobody was uselessly occupied in taking care of them, for, where they were, no injury could come near them. I should not myself like to be tied up in such a way, Imt it seems to do famously with them. One of the women had her child at her back, inside her blanket, its little brown face and black eyes peering over hn slioulder. Another was putting some sticks under a pot, hung from a pole, which rested on the forks of two others ; and one or two were enjoying a gossip on the grass. The men, of course, were doing nothing, while the boys were amusing themselves with their bows and arrows, in the use of which they are very expert. We had been told that they could hit almost anything, and resolved to try them with some coppers, which were certainly very small objects to strike in the air ; but the little fellows were wonderful archers. Each half- penny got its quietus the moment it left our fingers, , ,r it , } ST' f^ "i^i 230 Indian Habits. and they even hit a sixpence which Henry, in a fit of generosity, threw up. Birds must have a very small chance of escape when they get within range oif their arrows. It brought to my mind the little Balearic islanders, who in old times could not get their dinners till they had hit them from the top of a high pole with their slings, and country boys I had seen in England, Whom long practice had taught to throw stones so exactly that they could hit almost anything. Indeed, there seems to be nothing that we may not learn if we only try long enough, and with sufficient earnest- ness. It used to astonish me to see the Indians on the * Reserve * living in bark wigwams, close to comfortable log-houses erected for them by Government, but which they would not take as a gift. I used to think it a striking proof of the difficulty of breaking'off the habits formed in uncivilized life, and so indeed it is ; but the poor Indians have more sense in what seems mad- ness than I at first supposed. It appears they feel persuaded that living one part of the year in the warmth and comfort of a log-house makes them un- able to bear the exposure during the rest, when they are away in the woods on their hunting expeditions. But why they should not give up these wandering habits, which force such hardships on them, and repay them so badly after all, is wonderful, and must be attributed to the inveterate force of habit. It seems to be ver}-- hard to get wildness out of the blood when Ca7i the hidiaiis be Civilized ? 231 once fairly in it. It takes generations in most cases to make such men civilized. Lord Dartmouth once founded a college for Indians in Massachusetts, when it was a British province, and some of them were col- lected and taught English and the classics, with the other branches of a liberal education ; but it was found, after they had finished their studies, that they were still Indians, and that, as soon as they had a chance, they threw away their books and English clothes, to run off again to the woods and wander about in clothes of skins, and live in wigwams. It is the same with the aborigines of Australia. The mis- sionaries and their wives have tried to get them taught the simple rudiments of English life — the boys to work and the girls to sew — but it has been found that, after a time, they always got like caged birds beating against their prison, and that they coukl not be kept from dart- ing off again to the wilderness. The New Zealander stands, so far as I know, a solitary and wonderful ex- ception to this rule, the sons of men who were cannibals having already adopted civilization to so great an ex- tent as to be their own shipbuilders, sailors, captains, clerks, schoolmasters, and farmers. It seems almost the necessary result of civilized and uncivilized people living together in the same country that the latter, as the weaker, should fade away before their rivals, if they do not thoroughly adopt their habits. The aboriginal inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands are rapidly approaching ex- \ 1 1 232 Their past Decay as a Race. tinction in spite of all cflforts to secure their perma- nence. The vices of civilization have corrupted the very blood of the race till they seem hopelessly fading away. The natives of New Holland are vanishing in the same way, though not, perhaps, from the same immediate causes. The Caribs of the West Indies, who were so fierce and powerful in the days of Columbus and his successors, are now ex- tinct. It is much the same with the Red Man of America. The whole continent was theirs from north to south, and from east to west, but now they are only to be found crowded into corners of our different provinces, a poor and miserable remnant, or as fugitives in remote prairies and forests, for they have been nearly banished altogether from the settled territories of the States. It is a curious fact, also, that this is not the first time widely-spread races of their colour have been swept away from the same vast surf:ice. Remains of former populations, which have perished before those who themselves are now perishing, are to be found in many parts, as in the huge burial mounds of Ohio, and the ruined cities of Guatemala and Yucatan. Canada has now settle- ments of Indians in various places, but they arc, altogether, few in number. One is on Manitoulin Island, near the northern shore of Lake Huron, where a clergyman of the Church of England, Mr Peter Jacobs, himself an Indian, ministers as a zealous and efficient missionary ; another, at the >-!» i TfTjT Indian Decay as a Race, 233 head of River St. Clair, stretches down the bank for four or five miles, the picture of neglect and aversion to work, in the midst of improvement at each side ; one on Walpole Island, down the river, where the missionary is one of the most earnest and laborious I have had the pleasure of knowing ; one on the banks of the River Thames, under the charge of the Mo- ravian brethren — the wreck of tribes who left the States in the war, last century — forming, with another setUement on the Grand River, near Brantford, the representatives of those who, in Lord Chatham's day, brought down that great orator's terrible denuncia- tion of the * calling into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitants of the woods, and dele- gating to the tomahawk and the scalping-knife of the merciless savage the rights of disputed property.' There are some others to the north and east of Toronto, but their numbers altogether are but the shadow of what they were once. Old Courtenay, speaking to me one day about those on the River St. Clair, where he had lived from his childhood, shook his head as a wandering, miserable family passed by on their wretched ponies, and said, feelingly, ' Poor things ! they'll soon follow the rest. I remember when there were a hundred on the river for twenty there are now. They all go at the lungs. Lying out in the wet brings on the terrible cough, and they're gone.' The Indian Agent for the west of the province told me, however, when in England, lately. !:•! f til fl ,1 r \ A V ;■ i % ' ! I lfl. J I i 234 Indian Decay as a Race. that they were keeping up their numbers now ; but I can hardly see how it is possible, if they do not take more care of themselves. The very mocassins tliey wear for shoes are fit, in my opinion, to kill any one — mere coverings of deer leather, which soak up water like blotting paper, and keep them as if perpetually standing in a pool. Then they get spirits from the storekeepers, in spite of every effort on the part of Government to prevent it, and they often suffer such privations for want of food as must tell fearfully on their health. I have often watched them passing on ponies or a-foot ; if the former, the squaws sitting cross-legged on the bare backs, like men, with their children round them, and guiding their animals by a rope halter ; the men carrying only a gun, if they were rich enough to have one \ and I have thought of the contrast between their present state and the story of their numbers and fierceness, as handed down in the old French narratives of two hundred years ago ; how they kept the French in perpetual fear, burning their houses and even their towns ; how the woods swarmed, in different parts, with their different independent nations — the Hurons, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Ojibbeways — and how, in later years, they played so terrible a part in the French and American wars with Great Britain. They seem like snow in summer, when only a patch lies here and there, awaiting speedy disappearance, of all that covered hill and valley in its season. Some tribes, indeed, have passed away Alleged Innocence of Savage Life. 235 on on altogether since the first landing of Europeans on the continent. Those at Nonantum, in Massachusetts, for whom the great missionary, John Eliot, translated the Bible two hundred years ago, are all gone, so that the Book which once spoke to them of the world to come, and a copy of Avhich still survives in the museum at Boston, now lies open without a living creature who can read it. The Mandans, a great tribe in the western prairies — the only tribe, indeed, of whom I have heard, among the Indians of the present day, as building regular fortified and permanent villages and towns, have been entirely swept off within the last thirty years by the small-pox, which was brought among them by some poor trader. It is a striking contradiction to what we sometimes hear of the happy innocence of savage life that the Indians, when they had all the country to themselves, were continually at war with one another. The Mohawks, who lived in the northern part of the United States, seem especially to have been given to strife, often leaving their own side of the great lakes to make desolating inroads into Canada, until their name became such a word of terror that the very mention of it spread alarm in an encampment. P>en at this day, I have been assured that to raise the cry of ' the Mohawks are coming,' would strike a delirium of panic through a whole settlement. They seem to think they are still somewhere not far off, and may re- appear at any moment. But though the Mohawks 236 The Mohawks, may have left so blood-stained a memory of themselves, it may be safely said that there was hardly one tribe better than another. The pages of the old chroniclers are red with the continual record of their universal conflicts. At the same time, it is curious, as showing how widely-spread the terrors of the Mohawk name came to be, that the dissolute young men of Addison's day, who were wont to find pleasure in acts of violence and terror in the streets of London by night, called themselves * Mohocks.' The French appear to have themselves been in part to blame for their sufferings from the Indians, from the wars they excited between rival nations, and the readiness with which they furnished their allies with the means of destruction. The passions thus kindled too often recoiled upon themselves. Their traders had no scruples in supplying to any extent the three great cravings of an Indian — rum, tobacco, and scalping-knives — the first of which led, in innumerable cases, to the too ready use of the last. A scalping-knife, by the way, is an ugly weapon, with a curved blade like an old-fashioned razor, but sharp at the point, and was used to cut off the skin from the top of a dead enemy's head, with the hair on it, to preserve as a proof of their warlike exploits. The number of scalps any warrior possessed being hailed as the measure of his renown in his tribe, the desire for them became as much a passion with an Indian, as tlie wish for the Victoria Cross with a British soldier, and raised an almost ungovernable excitement in their A Narrow Escape. ^37 breasts when an opportunity for gratifying it offered itself A story is told of a British officer who was travelling many years ago in America, with an Indian for his guide, waking suddenly one morning and finding liim standing over him in a state of frenzy, his features working in the conflict of overpowering passions like those of one possessed, his knife in his hand, ready, if the evil spirit triumphed, to destroy his master for the sake of his scalp. The officer's waking happily broke the spell, and the Indian flung himself at the feet of his intended victim, told him his temptation, and rejoiced that he had escr.ped. He had seen him ])lay- ing with his long, soft hair, he said, and could not keep from thinking what a nice scalp it would furnish, till he had all but murdered him to get it* That the very name of ' Indian ' should have filled the heart of all who heard it in old times with horror is not to be wondered at. However miserable they may be now, in great part through their con- stant wars among themselves, they were frightfully cruel and bloodthirsty savages when their nations and tribes were numerous. We have little idea from anything Canada now otfers, as to their manners and habits, or their character, in the days of their fierce power; but it cannot be said that this is owing to their being civilized or to their having become more * The ancient Scythians, also, scalped their enemies. {Hero- dotus^ Bk. iv. 64.) The Indians are only Scythians or Tartars who liave fallen from the pastoral to the hunting life. .III w ■\ %I. ' i: 0 238 Narrative of Father Jogucs. humane. They are still as wild, to a large extent, as the wild beasts of the woods, in all their habits — still wanderers — still idle and thriftless— still without any arts — and still without anything like national progress. It rises only from their being a crushed and dispirited remnant, who have lost the bold- ness of their ancestors, and are fairly cowed and broken by a sense of their weakness. Out of the reach of civilization they are still the same as ever; and what that was in the days when they were the lords of Canada we may judge from the accounts left by the French missionaries, who then lived among them. The following narrative, which I translate from its quaint old French, has not, I believe, been printed before in English, and takes us most vividly back to those bygone times.* As a Protestant, I do not agree with everything that it contains, but you can remember that it is the narrative of a Jesuit priest. Father Jogues was of a good family of the town of Orleans, in France, and was sent to Canada by the general of his order in 1636. He went up to tlie country of the Hurons the same year, and stayed there till June, 1642, when he was sent to Quebec on the affairs of the 'great and laborious mission' among that people. Father Lallemant, at that time superior of the mission, sent for him, and proposed * • Relations des Jesuites dans la Nouvelle France.' Quebec, 1853- k--!'^'^ Narrative of Father Jogues, 239 the voyage, wliich was a terrible task, owing to the difficulty of the roads, and very dangerous from the risk of ambuscades of the Iroquois, who massacred every year a number of the Indians allied with the French. He proceeds to say — 'The proposition being made to me, I embraced it with all my heart. Behold us, then, on the way, and in dangers of every kind. We had to disembark forty times, and forty times to carry our canoes, and all our baggage past the currents and rapids which we met in a voyage of about three hundred leagues ; and although the savages who conducted us were very expert, we could not avoid the frequent upsetting of our canoes, accompanied with great danger to our lives, and the loss of our little luggage. At last, twenty-three days after our departure from the Hurons, we arrived, very weary, at Three Rivers, whence we descended to Quebec. Our business being completed in a fortnight, we kept the feast of St Ignatius ; and the next day, the ist of August, 1642, left Three Rivers to retrace our steps to the country whence we had come. The first day was favourable to us ; the second, we fell into the hands of the Iroquois. We were forty in number, divided among different canoes ; and that which carried the advance guard having dis- covered, on the banks of the great river, some tracks of men's feet newly impressed on the sand and clay, made it known. When we had landed, some said they 111 ■ tft Mil ■• f r t' ■ \ (.1 ■ I iif 1 w i'lf'l i« 1 [ (I . 1 .1 MM ill m t I I •■■. ^ !r ■;" i In ssihi ii ■•i i t Iv ' i;i' «r 1 1 9 I » ^ 240 Narrative of Father yogues. were traces of an enemy, others were sure the;' vvcre the footmarks of Algonquins, our allies. In this conten- tion of opinion Eustache Ahatsistari, to whom all the others deferred on account of his deeds of arms and his bravery, cried out — "Whether they are friends or enemies does not matter ; I see by their tracks that they are not more in number than ourselves ; let us advance, and fear nothing." *We had hardly gone on a half league when tlie enemy, hidden in the grass and brush, rose with a loud cry, discharging on our canoes a perfect hail of bullets. The noise of their arquebuses so terrified a part of our Hurons that they abandoned their canoes, and their arms, and all their goods, to save themselves by flight into the depths of the woods. This volley did us little harm ; no one lost his life. One Huron only had his hand pierced by a ball, and our canoes were broken in several places. There were four Frenchmen of us, one of whom, being in the rear- guard, saved himself with the Hurons, who fled before approaching the enemy. Eight or ten Christian catechumens jomed us, and having got them to ofier a short prayer, they made head courageously against the enemy, and though they were thirty men against a dozen or fourteen, our people sustained their attack valiantly. But perceiving that another band of forty Iroquois, who were in ambush on the other side of the river, were crossing to fall on them, they lost heart, and like those who had been less engaged, they le a ey Narrative of Father J agues. 24 1 fled, abandoning their comrades in the mclce. One I'renchman — Rend Goupil — since dead, being ncj longer supported by those who followed him, was taken, with some Hurons who had proved the most iece of bark, tying our arms and legs to four stakes fixed in the ground, like a St Andrew's cross. The children, emulating the cruelty of their parents, threw burning embers on our stomachs, taking pleasure in seeing our flesh scorch and roast. What hideous nights ! To be fixed in one painful position, unable to turn or move, incessantly attacked by swarms of vermin, with our bodies smarting from recent wounds, and from the suflering caused by older ones in a state of putrefaction, with the scantiest food to keep up what life was left ; of a truth these torments were terrible, but God is great ! At sunrise, for three fol- lowing days, they led us back to the scaffold, the nights being passed as I have described.' Thus far we have given the father's own words, and must condense what remains to be told : — After the three days were over the victims were led to two other villages, and exposed naked, under a burning sun, with their wounds untended, to the Narrative of FatJier Jogucs. 249 same miseries as they had passed through in the first. At the second, an Indian, perceiving that poor Cou- ture had not yet lost a finger, though his hands were all torn to pieces, made him cut off his own forefinger with a blunt knife, and when he could not sever it entirely the savage took and twisted it, and pulled it away by main force, dragging out a sinew a palm in length, the poor arm swelling instantly with the agony. At the third village, a new torture was added, by hanging poor Jogues by his arms, so high that his feet did not touch the ground; his en- treaty to be released only making them tie him the tighter, till a strange Indian, apparently of his own accord, mercifully cut him down. At last some temporary suspension of his sufferings approached. Fresh prisoners arrived, and a council determined that the French should be spared, in order to secure advantages from their countrymen. Their hands being useless from mutilation, they had to be fed like infants, but some of the women, true to the kindly nature of their sex, took pity on their sufferings, and did what they could to relieve them. Meanwhile, Couture was sent to another village, and P^re Jogues and Rene remained together. Unfortunately, however, of the three, only Couture could reckon upon the preservation of his life. It was the custom with these savages, that when a pri- soner was handed over to some particular Indian, to supply a blank in his household, caused by the death 1 , 1 li ^1 \* h 4 ^ I. ■•I t mm % 9 $ I i 256 Narrative of Father '/ agues. of his former sufferings, in company with a young Frenchman, in a canoe, taking with him sonic Hurons as guides. But he went only to meet the death he had foreboded. He had hardly reached the Iroquois country when he and his companion were attacked, plundered, stripped naked, and sub- jected to the same menaces and blows which he had • experienced before. A letter from the Dutch traders, some time after, related liow their captors, on the very day of their arrival, told them they would ]jc killed, adding, that they might be of good cheer, for they would not burn them, but would simply cut off their heads, and stick them on the palisades of the village, to let, other Frenchmen, whom they ex- pected to take, see them on their coming. The immediate cause of their murder was, that the Indians insisted that Jogues had left the devil among some luggage he had given them to kee[j for him, and tliat their crop of Indian corn IkkI thus been spoiled. On the 18th October, 1646, the end of his sufferings came at last. Having been called from his wigwam to the public lodge on that evening, to supper, an Indian, standing behind the door, split his skull, and that of his companion, witli an axe ; and on the morrow, the gate of the \illagc was garnished with their disfigured heads. Only or.e division of the nation, however — that witli which he lived, whose distinguishing sign or title was that of the Bear — seems to have been privy to their vil :c[> Kul the eeu Kit the th aue )ne ich hat lieir a Narrative of Father jf agues. i<,y murdei. The other two — the divisions of the Wolf and the Tortoise — resented the massacre, as if com- mitted on two members of their own tribes. And thus we take leave of the Jesuit martyr and his remarkable story. i7 Mil I' M »> I \\\ \u u I i" I M 's * 1 i j!!8 ii : r ri pi- f W 2;8 CHAPTER XVI. The medicine-man — Painted faces — Medals — An embassy — Religious notions — Feast of the dead — Christian Indians- Visit to the Indians on Lake Huron — Stolidity of the Indians — Henry exorcises an Indian's rifle. ■ W j HE great man among all tribes of Indians that are not very greatly changed is the medicine-man — a kind of sorcerer who acts at once as priest and physician. Arrayed in a strange dress of bear-skins, or painted leather, with his head hidden in the scalp of some animal, or decorated with an extraordinary crest of feathers, this dignitary still reigns with more power than the chiefs in the outlying portions of British America. Their modes of treatment are strange enough. A poor infant in one of the settlements lay ill of fever, and the mother, not knowing what to do for it, summoned the medicine-man to her aid. He came with his assistant, in full costume, and, having entered the wigwam where the poor little crea- ture lay, in a bark cradle, filled with the dust of rotten wood, began his doctoring by hollowing a mystic circle in the ground round it, within which none but those The Medicine- Alan, 259 i 1 ■ ( •] he permitted were to enter. Then, taking a drum which he had with him, or rather a double tambourine, filled inside with little stones, he commenced rattling it over the child, singing meanwhile with all his might. The noise was enough to have given a fever to a person in health, and was fit to have killed a sick baby outright ; but he kept thumping away, first at its ears — the little creature crying with fright — then at its back and its sides, till the sound was well-nigh deafen- ing. Next came a mysterious course of deep breath- ing from the bottom of his stomach, all round the child's body, which completed his treatment. Strange to say, the child got better, and of course the faith in the conjurer greatly increased. ' There was a black thing in its inside,' he said, 'which needed to be driven out, and he had done it by the noise and sing- ing.' It must, indeed, have been in spite of him, instead of by his help, that the poor child was restored. The dress of the Indians varies at different times, and according to the degree of civilization they have reached. Here and there you meet with one who has adopted European clothing, but these are rarely seen. Tley held a feast on a mound, by the road-side, in the summer after we went to the river — men, women, and children mustering to take part in it. Their clothing, excepting that of one or two, was about the same as usual — that is, a shirt and leggings, or the shirt only ; but their faces showed a most elaborate care in the f \ III liil h I i r ! •U 1: I!! '(■. S. K H' ■if! i i:l I. f i n 1 Jj 1 I ■' i ■ 1 :: 1 1 260 Indian Dancing. 'getting up.' Paint of different colours was lavi^lily expended on them. One had his nose a bright bkie , his eyes, eyelids, and cheeks, black ; and the rest of his face a lively red. Others had streaks of red, black, and blue, drawn from the ears to the moutli. Others were all black, except the top of the forehead, and the parts round the ears, and the tip of the cliin. Two lads amused me by the pride they evidently took in their faces ; that of the one being ornamented by a stroke of vermilion, broad and briglit, upwards ant,! downwards, from each corner of the mouth, in a slanting direction ; while that of the other rejoiced in a broad streak of red and blue, straight across his cheeks, from each side of his nose. The solemnities consisted of speeches from their orators, which were fluent enough, and were accompanied with a great deal of gesticulation, but were totally incomprehensible to me. Then followed a dance, in which all the men joined ; some women, sitting in the middle, beating a rude drum with a bone, whil} the men formed in a circle outside, and each commenced moving slowly round, lifting his legs as high as possible, at the risk, I thought, of throwing the dancer before him oft" his balance, by some unhappy accident, which, however, they were skilful enough to avoid. Meanwhile, the orchestra kept up a monotonous thumping, accompa- nied by a continuous grunting noise, which passed for singing. There could be nothing more ludicrous than to see them with all solemnity pacing round, each Indian Loyalty 261 with a leg in the air, as if they had been doing some- thing awfully important. Dancing ended, the reward of their labours followed. A huge kettle, hanging from a stout pole, over a fire close by, proved to liavc for its contents the carcase of a large dog — oae of the many who prowl round all wigwams — but it must have been fattened for the occasion, as they are lean enough generally. Hands and mouths were the only inplements for the repast, but they served the puq)Ose. The poor dog made its way, with amazing rapidity, down the crowd of hungry throats ; but the sight so disgusted me that I hastily left them. The Indians are very loyal in every part of British America. A number of old men are still alive who hold medals for their services in the war of 18 12-14 with the United States, and very proud they are of them. I remember finding a deputation from some tribe returning from a visit to the (lovernor- General, on board one of the lake steamers, and was struck with the great silver medal, almost like a porter's badge, which the eldest wore on his breast, witli the well-known profile of King George III. on it. By the way, one of the three or four Indians of the party was the handsomest man of the race I ever saw — tall, of full figure, with ex([uisite features, and soft curling hair. He must surely have been partly white. The dress they wore showed strikingly the meeting of the old wildness and the new civiliza- tion. That of the old bearer of the medal consisted of f •IJ « if i % ; \ 262 Indian Loyalty, a very broad-brimmed, high-crowned, and broad- belted black hat — such a hat as I never saw except among the Indians, and which must have been made from a pattern specially designed to please them by its extraordinary size; a light brown shabby frock- coat, with very short tails and large brass buttons : a great white blanket thrown over it, and a pair of ordinary trowsers, with mocassins on his feet, com- pleting the costume. There was a great slit in his ears for ornaments ; a string of wampum hung round his neck, and in one hand lay a long Indian pipe, while, from the other, the skin of a fox, made into a tobacco-pouch, hung at his side. One of the others had leggings instead of trousers, with broad bands of beads at the knees to fasten them, and a bag about the size of a lady's reticule, with a deep fringe of green threads nine or ten inches long, all round it, hung from his arm. I have no doubt that even the feeble remnant of the race that still survives would at once offer to fight for our Queen if their ser- vices should ever unfortunately be needed. 'Their great mother across the waters ' is the object of as much loyal pride to them as to any of her count- less subjects. Some years ago a United States officer was removing some Indians from the settled parts to the other side of the Mississippi, and liad encamped one day, when he saw a party approach- ing. Taking out his glass, he found that thej- were Indians, and forthwith sent off an Indian from his \w ^^- Rcligme>6 Notions. 26^ own band to meet them, with the stars and stripes on a flag. No sooner was the republican banner displayed than, to the astonishment of the officer, the strange Indian unrolled the Red Cross of St George, and held it up as that under which he ranged. The American wanted him to exchange flags, but he would not ; for, said he, * I live near the Hudson Bay Company, and they gave me this flag, and told me that it came from my great mother across the great waters, and would protect me and my wife and children, wherever we might go. I have found it is true as the white man said, and / wi// never part with it.^ One of the most intelligent Indians I ever met was a missionary among his countrymen in the Far AVx^st, who happened to be on a steamer with me. He gave me a great deal of information respecting the religious notions of his people, one part of which I thought \ery curious. He said that the Indians believed that, at death, the spirits of men went to the west, and came to a broad river, over which there was no bridge but the trunks of trees laid endwise across. On the farther side stretched prairies abounding with all kintls of game, and every possible attraction to the Indian, to reach which, every one, as he came, ventured on the perilous path that offered the means of getting over. But the wicked could not, by any means, keep their footing. The logs rolled about under them till they slipped into the river, which bore them hopelessly away. Ell V ^■1 i u f . i * I 1 it, ■> i ■'.• !] r'.f \i 1 1 r h I ' ' 1 1 i: f ] - . ii H i 1 ^' 1 ' K j* ^ 1 ^-^^ , ; ' 1 & 1 ■ ■ ■ ■' .■; I 1 ' t ||: !i ■ J ■ : 264 /*V^^/ ^/>^^ z?^^ have a curious idea respecting the soul, as the reason of this strange custom — at least those of them who, not being as yet Christians, still practise it. They t Ml i s 4- ! I ! t 'I i! IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // ^/ ^>. !?■ A* : asking him if he could make it right. Henry, of course, knew that the poor fellow was only labouring under a delusion, and at once told him he would make it all right. He, therefore, aslr.d him to let him have it for the night, his wish bemg to have an opportunity of cleaning it thoroughly. Having made it all right,'on the Indian's return he handed it to him, with all solemnity, telling him it was perfectly cured now. ' Me shoot ten days — get nothing,' said the unfortunate sportsman. * It's all right, now, though,* replied Henry, assuring him, besides, that there were no more witches about it. Sometime after, we were surprised by an Indian's coming to the house with the hind legs of a deer, telling us they were from the Indian for the 'man cured gun.' Henry was from home at the time, and as he had said nothing about his unbewitching the weapon, the gift was a mystery until his return. The gratitude shown for so small a favour was very touching, and impressed us all in the Indian's favour. He must have published Henry's wonderful powers, as well as rewarded them, for that same winter another Indian came to him in the woods, where he happened to be, with the same story, that his rifle was bewitched, and would not shoot. With a good deal of sly humour, Henry determined to play the conjurer this time, as he had no chance of getting the weapon home. He therefore told the Indian to sit down, and then drew a circle round him and the infected rifle, and proceeded to walk mysteriously ■ t II «»1 v\ H \\ i I if ■ (ii^ ' 1 1 ■■ 1 1 1 1 ^ !f 276 Indian Supcysiition. round him, uttering all the while any amount of gib- berish he could think of, and making magic passes in all directions. After repeating this a number of times, he took the rifle into his hands, and proceeded to examine it carefully, and seeing that it was in perfect order, he announced the ceremony to be complete, and handed it back again, with the assurance that he was not to be afraid of it, that he had only to take a good aim, and that there were no witches about it now. The Indiar. ^i'unted thanks, and made ofif ; and Henry heard no more of it till, some months after, when he happened to be in a neighbouring village, the subject of his charm.s, to his surprise, came up to him, and told him * he must be a great doctor — Indian's gun shoot right ever since he cured it.' Henry answered that it had needed no cure, and that he had only done what he did because the Indian would not have believed his rifle was right if he had not done some- thing. What the effect was on the Indian's notions I know not, but we certainly heard no more of bewitcn- ed rifles. 277 CHAPTEk XVII. The humming-bird — Story of a pet — Canada a good country for poor men — ^A bush story of misfortune — Statute labour — Tortoises — The liay season — Our waggon-driving — Henry and I are nearly drowned — Henry falls ill— Hackwood doctors. was in May of the second year I first noticed the humming-bird. There are different species in Canada in summer, but all seem equally beautiful. When I first saw one, it was like a living gem, darting hither and thither in the open round the house, never resting but for a few moments, while it poised itself on its lovely wings, which seemed motion^ss from the very rapidity of their vibration. No bird flies so fast, small though it be, so that it is impossible to follow it as it darts from spot to spot. Later in the season, a bunch of flowers, at an open window, was pretty sure to bring one quiver- ing over them, preparatory to thrusting its long thin bill into the cups, to drink the sweets that lay at the bottom. Sometimes in the evenings, they might be seen, for half an hour at a time, darting at the little clouds of flies which dance in the air, under the branches of the trees, or in the open, — retiring to a M I « ■? >'' 1^ i It h ! I I iJ» II 278 T/ie Humminor-Bird. twig to rest when tired. They seem, for a great part of their time, to feed on such insects^ the stomach of several humming-birds, I have heard, having been found full of them when opened. There is a charming account in a Philadelphia magazine of one which showed greater familiarity with man than has ever been known from any other of its species.* One of the young ladies of a family was sitting at an open window, when a humming-bird flew in, very feebly, and dropped on the floor, apparently exhausted. To pick it up was the work of a moment ; and the thought that it might be tired and hungry, after a long flight, forthwith set its friend to try whether she could tempt it to eat anything. Mixing some cream and sugar, and pouring a little of it into the cup of a bell-shaped flower, the beautiful creature, to her great delight, at once began to sip, and gather- ing strength as he did so, by and by flew off" through the window once more. Next day, and every day thenceforth, through the summer, the little thing came back about the same time, for another repast, fluttering against the window, if it happened to be shut ; and whenever he had not got enough, flying backwards and forwards close at hand, in great rest- lessness, till a fresh supply had been manufactured. It did not matter who was in the room, the sight of the flower held out brought him in, when he was >vaiting for his meal; indeed, his natural timidity * Quoted in Gosse's ' Canadian Naturalist.' ]'; Canada good for the Poor. 270 seemed to have been entirely laid aside. Late in the season, a day passed without his visit, and they found that, in all probability, he had flown off to the south for the winter. Whether he came back again the next spring has not been recorded. Some of the settlers in^ the bush, back from the river, were striking examples of the benefits a poor man may get from coming to such a country as Canada. I used often to go back on various errands, and was always delighted with the rough plenty of farmers who, not many years ago, had been labourers at home, with only a few shillings a week for wages. Now, by steady labour and sobriety, many amongst them were proprietors of a hundred acres of excellent land, and sat down at each meal to a table which even well-to-do people in England are not in the habit of enjoying. But there were some cases of failure, which no less strongly brought the peculiar circumstances of the country before me. Ten miles away from us, and lying back from the river, a person who had been a baker in London, but . ad determined to turn farmer, had settled some years before. He built a log-house, and cleared a patch, but it was slow work, as he had to bring on his back all the flour and potatoes, or what his household needed, the whole way from the river, through the forest, over swamps, and every other difficulty that lay in his road. After a time he fell ill of fever and ague — the great curse of new or low-lying districts in Canada and the States. For eight X a . .1 i ■ I f 31 i t L ■V \ I 1 - 1 !■ «; Ki 280 A Bush Story of Misfortune. months he could do no work, and meanwhile his family were driven to the greatest straits to keep themselves alive. At last, he was able to get about once more. Everything was behind with him, but he wus still unbroken in spirit. But now came a new trial : a great tree which had been left standing near his house, fell down across it, breaking in the roof, though for- tunately without killing any one. The axe and patience offered the means of escaping from this misfortune also; and, before long, the tree was removed, and the shattered dwelling restored. For awhile all went on well enough after he had thus once more got on his feet. But his troubles were not yet at an end. Coming home one night with a heavy load, on his weary ten miles' road from the front, in crossing a swamp on a round log, his foot slipped, and a sharp stake ran through his boot deep into the flesh, impaling him, as it were, for a' time. How he got home I know not, but of course he left his load behind him, and had to crawl to his house as best he could. This last calamity fairly crushed his hopes of success ; and, on recovering, he abandoned his land, moved with his family to a town eighty miles off, and took service at his old trade, in which, after a time, he was able to recommence business on his own account. When the roads got pretty dry in the summer-time, we were all summoned by the * pathmaster * of our neiglibourhood — a dignitary who is elected annually to superintend the repairs of the different roads — to do Statute Labo2u\ 281 our statute labour. As money to pay a substitute was out of the question, we had, of course, ourselves to shoulder shovels, and turn out for the six days' work required of us. My three elder brothers, and a number of neighbours, were on the ground on the day appointed, but they were an hour or two later than they would have required any labourers they might have hired to have been, and they forthwith commenced their task. It was amusing to see how they managed to get- through the time, what with smoking, discussing what was to be done, stopping to chat, sitting down to rest, and all the manoeuvres of unwilling workers. A tree had to be cut up at one part, and hauled together for burning off ; a ditch dug from nowhere to nowhere, at some other point ; a bridge to be repaired, at a third, by throwing a log or two across it, in the places from which broken ones had been drawn out ; a mud hole filled up, at a fourth ; and the corduroy road, over a swamp, made more passable, at a fifth, by throwing a large quantity of branches on it, and covering them deeply with earth, so as to get a smooth surface. ' I guess I've done more for the Queen nor she's done for me,' said John Courtenay, as he sat down for the tenth time. * I'll take it easy now, the boss is up the road,' the ' boss ' being the pathmaster, who had gone off to another gang at some distance. You may be sure our engineering was very poorly done, but it was all we had to look to to keep the roads passable at all in the wet weather. The vacant lots, every here and there, i I 'I > S> ! li i.'^ i i 1 ■f Eaf .;l. 1 , tl. ^^B 1 282 Tortoises, were the greatest hindrance to any improvements worthy the name, nobody caring to repair the road througli an absentee's land, though all suffered from its being neglected. There were a number of tortoises in the ponds in the woods and by the roadside, and they used to give us a good deal of amusement. They were of all sizes, but generally not very large, and were really beautiful in the markings of their shells, when you had them close at hand. But to get near enough for this was the difficulty. They used to come out of the water, in the middle of the day, to sun themselves, or to sleep, on the dry logs which lay over it, and the great point was to try to keep them from plumping off in an instant, rather than making to the land. It was all but hopeless to try it, but we would not give it up. Sometimes we came upon them away from the watei a little, and then we had it all our own way with them. They move very awkwardly on the ground, and seem too stupid to do even as much as they might, but they must not be handled incautiously, for they give terrible snaps with their horny mouths, which are like the sides of a smith's vice for hardness and strength of hold. A poor Scotchman who came out one summer, found out this to his cost. He had been coming down the road, and saw a large tortoise, or * mud turtle,' as the Canadians call them, apparently sound asleep at the edge of the creek. Of course he thought he had come on a treasuie, and determined to catch it if f Tortoises. 283 possible. Stealing, therefore, breathlessly, up to the spot, he made a grab at it before it suspected danger, and in a minute had it swinging over his shoulder by its foreleg. The leg was short, and the round shield that covered the creature was therefore close up to his head. He thought he would take it home, and show tlie good folks this wonder of the woods ; perhaps he thought of taming it, or of making combs for his wife out of its back shell. At any rate, on he jogge'd quite proud of his acquisition. He would soon get over the five miles more he had to walk, and tlien what excite- ment there would be at the sight of such a creature. But, by this time, the turtle had recovered presence of mind enough to look round him, pnd accordingly poked his head out, and in doing so came invitingly close to his captor's ear, on which his two jaws closed in a moment. If ever a prisoner had his revenge he had it. The Scotchman might have pulled his ear off, in trying to get free, but nothing short of that seemed of any use. He could not let go the leg, for that would leave the whole weight of the turtle- hanging from his ear, and he could not keep his arms up without getting cramps in them. But he had to try. In misery, with his wretched ear bent down close to the shell, and his hands immovably raised to the same shoulder the whole way, he had to plod on, the whole distance, to his house, where his appearance caused no small alarm as he came near. Nothing could even then be done to loosen the creature's hold ; it was like a vice — until i f ■|s 284 Tortoises. wv 1.1 at last they managed to relieve him, by getting the head far enough out to cut it off, after which the jaws were at last parted, and the sufferer allowed to tell his luckless adventure. One of our neighbours used to shock our notions of propriety by eating the * turtles ' he caught. * There are fish, there are flesh, and there are fowl on a turtle,* he used to say in his bad English, in describing their charms, but the worthy Manksman got no one to join him in his appreciation of them. The Indians have a kind of religious veneration for them, and would not, on any account, do them any harm. I knew one who acted as interpreter at a missionary station, who used to say that the hardest trial he had had, after he became a Christian, was one day in summer, when, having pounced upon a tortoise, he took it on his back to carry it home, and was overtaken by a dreadful storm of thunder and lightning. He said that he could hardly get over the thought, that it was because he had offended the sacred creature, and this notion fairly made him perspire with terror ; but he had the courage to resist his alarm, and after the sky had cleared, he lifted it once more on his shoulder, and went home resolved never to yield to fear of such a kind again. The hay in the neighbourhood was mown about the end of June, and as our own supply was, as yet, far short of our requirements, we had to buy a quantity. To get it cheaper, we undertook to send our waggon to u The Hay Season. 285 the field for it, and bring it home ourselves. Henry and I were detailed for this service, and started one morning with the oxen and the waggon, a frame of light poles having been laid on the ordinary box to enable us to pile up a sufficient load. I had to get inside, while Henry forked up the hay from the cocks on the ground, my part being to spread it about evenly. We got on famously till the load was well up in the frame, the oxen moving on from one cock to another, through the stumps, at Henry's commands, but without any special guidance. All at once, while they were going at the rate of a'jout two miles an hour, the wheels on one side gradually rose, and before I could help myself, over went the whole frame, hay and all, on the top of Henry, who was walking at the side. The oxen had pulled the load over a hillock at the foot of a stump. I was sent clear of the avalanche, but Henry was thrown on his back, luckily with his head and shoulders free, but the rest of his body em- bedded in the mass. Neither of us was hurt, how- ever, and we laughed heartily enough, after we had recovered our self-possession, the first act being to stop the oxen, who were marching off with the four wheels, as solemnly as ever, and had no idea of coming to a halt without orders. Of course we had to clear the frame, get it set up again on the waggon^ and fork up all the hay once more, but we took care of the oxen the second time, and met with no more accidents. : \ \ « f. I hi '■' ■■|.i I 9'i It ,> !' P 286 Henry and I nearly Drowned, Henry and I were very nearly drowned, shortly after this, in that great lumbering canoe of ours, by a very ridiculous act on our own parts, and an unfore- seen roughening of the water. Some bricks were needed to rebuild the chimney, and they could not be had nearer than the opposite side of the river. Henry and I, therefore, set off in the forenoon to get them, and crossed easily enough. We went straight over, intending to paddle down the shore till we reached the place where the bricks were to be had, about two miles below. Having nothing to hurry us, and the day being uncommonly bright and beau- tiful, we made no attempt to be quick, but drew the canoe to the land, and sallied up the bank to get some ears of Indian com which were growing close by, and offered great attractions to our hungry stomachs. At last, after loitering by the way for an hour or two, we reached our destination, bought the bricks, and paddled our canoe some distance up a stream to get near them, that we might the more easily get them on board ; but ignorance is a bad teacher, even in so simple a matter as loading a canoe with bricks. We had no thought but how to pack them all in at once, so that we should not have to come over again, and kept stowing them in all* the way along the canoe, except at each end, where we re- served a small space for ourselves. When the whole had been shipped, we took our places — Henry at the bows, on his knees ; I at the stern, on a seat made of Henry and I nearly Droivncd, 287 a bit of the lid of a flour-barrel — each of us with his paddle. It was delightful to steer down the glassy creek, and when we turned into the river, and skirted up close to the banks, it seemed as if we were to get back as easily as we came, though Henry just then bade me look over the side, telling me that the canoe was only the length of a forefinger out of the water, and, sure enough, I found it was so; but we neve." thought it boded any danger. In smooth water one is not apt to think of the rough that may follow. \Ve got along charmingly for a time, under the lee of the land, which made a bend out, some distance above our house, on the American side ; we determined to allow a good deal for the current, and go to this point, before we turned to cross. Unfortunately for us, in our ignorance of the proper management of a canoe under difficulties, a great steamer, passing on to Chicago, swept up the stream, close to us, just as we were about to strike out for home, and the swell it raised made the water run along the edge of the canoe, as if it were looking over and wanted to get in. It lurched and twisted, got its head wrong, and all but filled, even with this slight agitation. We had got over this trouble when we found, to our alarm, on getting out from the shelter of the land, that the wind was getting up, freshly enough to make the mid-stream quite rough. If we had known the extent of our danger we would have turned back and unloaded some of our cargo, but no such notion occurred to us. We » W I \ 288 Henry and I nearly Drozvncd. I ill I * ' finish as best I could by a hard rubbing with a canvas towel. To write a letter in those days was by no means a light task. Ink was a rare commodity, and stood a great deal of water before it was done. When we had none, a piece of Indian-ink served pretty well ; and when that was lo^t, we used to mix gunpowder and vinegar together, and make a kind of faintly-visible pigment out of the two. The only paper we could get was dreadful. How cruelly the pen used to dab through it ! How invincibly shabby a letter looked on it ! The post-office was in a store kept by a French Canadian, and was limited enough in its arrangements. I remember taking a letter one day a little later than was right, as it appeared. * The mail's made up, Mr Stanley,' said the post-master, ' and it's against the law to open it when it's once sealed ; but I suppose I ma} as well oblige a friend.' So saying, he took down a piece of brown paper from the shelf behijxl him, cut NciO Occupations. 309 I than Mr law ma) ,vn a cut round some seals which wcie on the back of it, and ex- posed the 'mail;' which, forsooth, I found consisted of a single letter ! Mine was presently laid peacefully at the side of this earlier sharer of postal honour, and I hope did not make the bundle too heavy for the mail-boy's saddle-bags. It used to amuse us to see how readily every one round us took to new occupations, if anything hindered his continuing the one in which he had- previously been engaged. You would hear of a tailor turning freshwater sailor, and buying a flat-bottomed scow, to take goods from one part of the river to another ; one shoemaker turned miller, and another took to making and selling 'lumber.' A young lad, the son of a minister, who wished to get a good education, first hired himself out to chop cord-wood, and when he had made enough to buy books, and keep a reserve on hand, he engaged with a minister over the river, who had an * academy,' to give him tuition, in return for having his horse cleaned, and the house-wood split. Working thus, he gained Latin and Greek enough to go to college ; but had to return to his axe, and work for another winter, to get money to pay the expenses of the first session. This obtained, off he set, and ended by taking the degree of M.A. at Yale College, Connecticut. In the mean time, however, a change had passed over his mind as to becoming a clergy- man j and instead of seeking a church, he went into partnership with his brother in the patent medicine t 1 t^' * ^' 3 1 o The Parson for Driver, \ : ;■ "iii '-..': trade, in which calling, I suppose, he is now engaged in one of the United States' cities. I was once travelling on a winter night, in a public stage, on the edge of Lake Ontario. The vehicle was a high waggon, with a linen cover stretched over a round framework, like a gipsy tent. I was the only pas .mger, and had taken my place in the body of the maciii This did not suit the driver, however, who seemed lo feel lonely ; and, after a time, turning round to me, he said — ' I guess we'd be better together this cold night. Come this way — won't you ? ' Of course, I instantly complied ; and then received, among much various information on matters interesting to coach- drivers, a narrative of his own life, a portion of which I still remember : — * I'm a reg'lar preacher, you see,' said he. * I was on the circuit round Framley for one turn, and they promised pretty fair, but I didn't get enough to keep house on. Then I got changed to Dover circuit, and that was worse. Says I to my wife — " Wife," says I, " preachin' wont keep our pot bilin', anyhow — -I must scare up somethin' else, somehow." So I heard that there was a new stage to be put on at Brownsville ; and I went to Squire Brown, and told him that, if he liked, I'd drive it ; and so, here I am — for, you see, the mail stage has to go even if a parson should have to drive it ; ' and he ended with a broad grin and a long laugh — ha — ha — ha ! 311 U CHAPTER XIX. Americanisms— Our poultry — The wasps — Their nests—' Bob's' skill in killing them — Racoons — A hunt — Racoon cake— The town of Busaco — Summer * sailing ' — Boy drowned — French settlers. E were struck, as every new comer is, by the new meanings put by Canadians on words, the new connexions in which they used them, and the extraordinary way in which some were pronounced. Of course, we heard people ' guessing ' at every turn, and whatever any one intended doing, he spoke of as ' fixing.' You would hear a man say, that his waggon, or his chimney, or his gun, must be 'fixed;* a girl would be ready to take a walk with you, as soon as she had ' fixed herself;' and the baby was always * fixed ' in the morning, when washed and dressed for the day. ' Catherine,' said a husband one day to his wife, in my hearing, pronounc- ing the last syllable of her name so as to rhyme with line, * I calculate that them apples 'ill want regulatin',' referring to some that were drying in the sun. They * reckon' at every third sentence. A well-informed man is said to be ' well posted up ' in some particular ' I 'i i' mu (TSI .-litl 312 AfnencanisjHS. subject. Instead of * what,' they very commonly say 'how,' in asking questions. A pony was praised to me as being 'as fat as mud.' In place of our exclamations of surprise at the communication of any new fact, the listener will exclaim, ' I want to know.' Any log, or trunk of a tree, or other single piece of timber, is in- variably a ' stick,' even if it be long enough for a mast. S\\ the stock of a timber-yard is alike * lumber.' An ewer is ' a pitcher ; ' a tin-pail is ' a kettle ; ' a servant is ' a help ; ' an employer is * a boss ; ' a church pew is ' a slip ; ' a platform at a meeting is ' a stage ; ' children are * juveniles ; ' and a baby is * a babe.' In pronouncing the words engine, or ride, or point, or any other word with vowels prominent in it, if you would imitate a Canadian, you would need to open your mouth very >Nide, and make as much of each sound as you can. Of course, I speak only of the country folks, native born ; the town people, and the educated classes, generally speak as correctly as the same classes in Eng- land. We cannot help noticing, moreover, that all th(?se corruptions are trifling compared with those which we find in the popular dialects of diffierent parts of our own country. You can travel all through Canada and understand everything you hear, except a word now and then ; but at home, to pass from one shire to an- other is often like passing to a different people, so far as regards the language. The great amount of travel- ling now-a-days compared with the fixed life of our forefathers, may serve to account for this. People of Our Pojtllry. 3^2, ar el- tur of every nation meet in Canada, and all come to speak very nearly alike, because they move about so much ; but the various races that settled in England or Scot- land ages ago kept together closely, and conse(iuently each learned to speak in a way of its own. Our poultry increased very soon after our com- mencing on the river, until it became quite a flock ; but we had a good deal of trouble with them. The weasels were very destructive to the chickens, and so were the hen-hawks and chicken-hawks, which were always prowling round. But the hens managed to beat off the last of these enemies, and a terrible noise they made in doing so. The whole barn-yard popula- tion used to give Robert great annoyance, by Hying over the fence he had put up round a piece of grounrl set apart as a garden ; but he succeeded in terrifying them at last, by rushing out with a long whip when- ever they made their appearance. The very sight of him was enough, after a time, to send them off with outstretched wings and necks, and the most amazing screeches and cackling ; it was laughable to see their consternation and precipitate flight. Our turkeys were a nuisance as well as a comfort to us : they were mucli given to wandering, and so stupid withal, that if they once got into the woods we rarely saw them again. The only plan was to have their wings cut close, and to keep them shut up in the barn-yard. In compensa- tion for this trouble, however, we took ample revenge both on them and the cocks and hens, alike in person ! t 3H Large Qua}i titles of Eggs. ■ '\ . »■■ ■ ( ^1 tm ".1 i-i ^ 5 and in the harvest of eggs, which formed a main element in most of our dishes. We needed all we could cjet. As to eggs, it seemed as if any quantity would have been consumed. There was to be a * bee ' one time, to raise a second barn ; and my sisters were in great concern because they could not find out where the hens were laying. At last, they saw one go down a hole in the barn floor, and instantly concluded they had discovered the secret hoard. A plank was forthwith lifted, and there, sure enough, were no less than twenty dozen of eggs lying in one part or other. It was hard work to get them out, but Henry and I helped, and we brought them all to the house. In a week or ten days there were not two dozen left. The men who had attended the 'bee,' and one or two whom we kept on at wages, had devoured them all in cakes and puddings, or in the ordinary way. But what would these bush-fellows not get down? One day, we had a labourer with us, and Eliza, to please him, set out a large glass dish of preserves, holding, certainly, a pound weight at the least. She thought, of course, he would take a little to his bread ; but his notions on the subject were very different, for, drawing the dish to him, and taking up a tablespoon, he supped down the whole in a succession of huge mouthfuls. I have known a hired man eat a dozen of eggs at his breakfast ! The wasps were very numerous round the house in summer. A nest of these creatures ensconced Mi^ lVasJ)s. 315 themselves in a hole between two logs, in the front part of it, and, as they never troubled us, wc did not trouble them. But not so our little terrier. Bob. The mouth of the nest was about a yard from the ground, and admitted only one at a time. Below this, Bob would take his seat for hours together, watching each arrival; sometimes letting them go in peaceably, but every now and then jumping up at them, with his lips drawn back, and giving a snap which seldom failed to kill them. The little fellow seemed to have quite a passion for wasp-hunting. The dead proofs of his success would often lie thick over the ground by evening. How the colony ever bore up against his attacks I cannot imagine. One day we saw John Robinson, a labourer, whom we had engaged, rushing down in hot haste from the top of the field flinging his arms about in every direction, and making the most extraordinary bobbing and fighting, apparently at nothing. But, as he got near, he roared out, 'I've tumbled a wasps'-nest, and they're after me,' and this was all we could get out of him for some time. Indeed they followed him quite a distance. He had been lifting a log that was im- bedded in the ground, when, behold ! out rushed a whole townful, sending him off at once in igno- minious flight. I used to think the nests of the wasps, which we sometimes found hanging from branches in the woods, most wonderful specimens of insect manufacture. They were oval in form, with 1 I i.i 316 Racoons. the mouth at the bottom, and looked often not unlike a clumsily made boy's top. But of what material do you think they were constructed ? Of paper — real true paper, of a greyish colour, made by the wasps gnawing off very small pieces of decayed wood, which they bruise and work up till it changes its cha- racter, and becomes as much paper as any we can make ourselves. It is wonderful that men should not have found out, from such a lesson, the art of making this most precious production much sooner than they did. The racoons, usually called 'coons, were a great nuisance when the corn was getting ripe. They came out of the woods at night, and did a great deal of mischief in a very short time. We used to hunt them by torchlight, the torches being strips of hickory bark, or lumps of fat pine. We could have done nothing, however, without the help of our dogs, who tracked them to the trees in which they had taken refuge, and then v;e shot them by the help of the lights, amidst prodigious excitement and commotion. It w^as very dangerous to catch hold of one of them if it fell wounded. They could twist their heads so far round, and their skin was so loose, that you were never sure you would not get a bite in whatever way you held them. The Weirs, close to us, got skins enough one autumn to make fine robes for their sleigh. I never knew but one man who had eaten racoon, and he was no wifcr than be needed to be. He was 1 i A Racooji Hunt, ?>^1 a farm-labourer, who stammered in his speccli, and lived all alone, and was deplorably i^^'norant. Meeting him one day after a hunt, in which he had got a large racoon for his share, he stopped me to speak of it thus — ' Ggre-e-at rac-c-coon that — there was a p-pint of oil in him — it m-made a-a m-most beautiful short- cake ! ' I wished him joy of his taste. I remember one racoon hunt which formed a sub- ject of conversation for long after. Mr Wjeii's field of Indian corn had been sadly injured, and our own was not much better, so we resolved on destroying some of the marauders if possible. All the }oung fellows for miles up and down the river, gathered in the afternoon, to get a long talk beforehand, and to make every preparation. Some of us saw to the torches — that there were plenty of them, and that they were of the right kind of wood ; others looked to the guns, to have them properly cleaned, and the ammunition ready. ' I say, Ned Thompson,' said one, * I hope you won't be making such a noise as you did last time, frighten- ing the very dogs.' But the speaker was only told in return, to keep out of the way of everybody else, and not run the risk of being taken for a coon himself as he went creeping along. In due time all work was over for the night on our farm, the dogs collected, a hearty supper enjoyed, amidst the boasts of some and the jokes of others, and off we set. The moon was very young, but it hung in the clear heavens like a silver bow. A short walk brought us to the forest, I I f ? \ . \i i.i y^'Mi \-i. ■aV. 1 M 3'8 A Racoon Hunt. nnrl .bere we spread ourselves, so as to take a larger sweep, intending that the two wings should gradually draw round and make part of a circle. We could see the crescent of the moon, every now and then, through the fretted roof of branches, but it would have been very dark on the surface of the ground had not the torches lent us their brightness. As it was, many a stumble checked our steps. It was rough work — over logs, into wet spots, round trees, through brush, with countless stubs and pieces of wood to keep you in mind that you must lift your feet well, like the Indians, if you did not wish to be tripped up The light gleaming through the great trees on wild picture of men and dogs, now glaring in the rea flame of the torches, now hidden by the smoke, was very exciting. The dogs had not, as yet, scented anything, but they gradually got ahead of us. Presently we heard the first baying and barking. We forthwith made for the spot, creeping up as silently as possible, while the dogs kept the distracted racoon from making its escape. How to get a glimpse of it was the trouble. ' There's nothing there that I can see,' whispered Brown to me ; but the dogs showed that they thought differentl}', by the way they tore and scratched at the bottom of the tree. "What with the leaves, the feeble- ness of the moonlight, and our distance from the object, every eye was strained, for a time, without see- ing a sign of anything living. At last, Henry motioned that he saw it, and sure enough there it was, its shape The Toion of Jhisaco. 319 visible far up on a branch. Another moment and the sharp crack of his rifle heralded its death and descent to the ground. We had good success after this first hicky shot, which had been only one of many fired at what seemed to be the racoon, but had been only a knot in the tree, or, perhaps, a shadow. We did not come home till late, when, with dogs almost asf tired as ourselves, the whole party re-assembled, each bearing oft' his spoils with him if he had won any. I was walking up the road one afternoon with my brother, when we came Lo an opening on the right hand, apparently only leading into pathless woods. Stopping me, however, Henry turned and asked, ' If I saw yon post stuck up in the little open?' It was some time before I could make it out. At last I noticed what he alluded to — simply a rough post, six feet high, stuck into the ground, in the middle of unbroken desolation. * That's the centre of the market-place in the town of Busaco, that is to be,' said he. * All this ground is surveyed for a city, and is laid out in building lots, — not in farms.' I could not help laughing. There was not a sign of human habitation in sight, and the post must have been there for years. When it will be a town it is very hard to conjecture. It stands on the outside of a swampy belt, which must have deterred any one from settling in it, and towns don't go before agricultural improve- ment, but follow it, in such a country as Canada, or. \ \ 91 ' r '. /., 320 The Tozvii of Btisaco, indeed, anywhere, except in a merely manufacturing district, or at some point on a busy line of travel. Some time after, a poor man efifected one great step towards its settlement, by a very unintentional improve- ment. He had a little money, and thought that if he dug a deep, broad ditch, from the swamp to the river, he could get enough water to drive a mill, which he intended to build close to the bank. But it turned out, after the ditch was dug, and his money gone, that the water, which he thought came into the swamp from springs, was nothing but rain, that had lodged in the low places, and had been kept there by the roots of trees and the want of drainage. For a time the stream was beautiful, but, after a little, the swamp got better, and the stream diminished, until, in a few weeks, the channel was dry, and the swamp became good land. I hope the poor fellow had bought it be- fore commencing his ditch. If so, he would make money after all, as his improvement raised its value immensely. A number of the young men of the humbler class along the river used to go away each summer ' sailing ' — tliat is, they hired as sailors on the American vessels, which traded in whole fleets between the eastern and western towns on the great lakes. It was a very good thing for them that they could earn money so easily, but the employment was not always free from danger. One lad, whom I knew very well — William Forth, the Slimmer ' Sailino' 321 son of a decent Scotch tailor — was lost in it in the autumn of our second year. He had sailed for Lake Superior, and did not return at the time expcclcd. Then his friends began to be anxious, especially when they heard the news of a great storm in the north west. He was never heard of again, and no doubt perished with all the crew, his vessel having foundered in the gale. Years after, it was reported that a schooner, sailing along the upper coast of Lake Huron, came upon the wreck of a small ship, down in the clear waters, and found means of hooking up enough to show that it was the one in which our poor neigh- bour's son had been engaged. Curiously and sadly enough, a second son of the same parents met a miserable death some years after. He was attending a threshing-mill, driven by horses, and had for his part to thrust in the straw to * feed it ; ' but he, unfortun- ately, thrust it in too far, and was himself drawn in, and crushed between t'le innumerable teeth by which the grain is pressed out. Before the machine could be stopped, poor James was cut almost to pieces. Tliu.> even the peaceful St Clair had its share in the trials that follow man under all skies, Occasionally, accidents and calamities of this kind would happen close to us, and I could not but be struck at the depth of feeling to which they gave rise amidst a thin population. The tenant on the only let farm in the neighbourhood, who lived a mile from us. .'! I I iU 1 1 322 4 Boy Drowned. lost a beautiful boy in a most distressing way. There was a wood wharf close to his house, from the end of which the lads used to bathe on fine summer evenings. A number of them were amusing them- selves thus, one afternoon, when Mrs Gilbert, the wife of the person of whom I speak, coming out from her work, chanced to look at them, and saw one who was diving and swimming, as she thought, very strangely. A little after, they brought her the news that her boy was drowned, and it turned out that it had been his struggles at which she had been looking with such unconcern. The poor woman took to her bed for weeks directly she found it out, and seemed broken- hearted ever after. The number of French in our neighbourhood, and the names of the towns and places on the map, all along the western lakes and rivers, often struck me. Beginning with Nova Scotia, we trace them the whole way — proofs of the sway France once had in North America. The bays and headlands, from the Adantic to the Far West, bear French names. For instance. Cape Breton, and its capital, Louisburg, and Maine, and Vermont, in the States. All Lower Canada was French ; then we have Detroit on Lake St Clair ; Sault Ste Marie at Lake Superior ; besides a string of old French names all down the Mississippi, at the mouth of which was the whilom French province of Louisiana, on the Gulf of Mexico. This shows signi- A 71 Indian Device. 3^3 ficantly the great vicissitudes that occur in the story of a nation. But our own history has taught us the same lesson. All the United States were once British provinces. I had come out early one morning, in spring, to look at the glorious river which lay for miles like a mirror before me, when my attention was attracted to a canoe with a great green bush at one end of it, floating, apparently empty, down the current. I soon noticed a hand, close at the side, slowly sculling it by a pad- dle, and keeping the bush down the stream. As it glided past, I watched it narrowly. A great flock of wild ducks were splashing and diving at some distance below ; but so slowly and silently did the canoe drift on, that they did not seem to heed it. All at once, a puff of smoke from ♦^ j bush, and the sound of a gun, with the fall of a niiinl)cr of ducks, killed and wounded, on the water, plainly showed what it meant. An Indian instantly rose up in the canoe, and paddled with all haste to the spot to pick up the game. It was a capital plan to cheat the poor bifls, and get near enough to kill a good number. There were im- mense flocks of waterfowl, after the ice brok - up, each year; but they were so shy that we .e very little the better for them. It was very different in earlier days, before population increased and incess- ant alarm and pursuit had made them wild, for the whole province must once have been a great sporting M 'I .'(■ 't f 1 ». i 1 I 3M Coolers Paradise, ground. There is a marsh on Lake Ontario, not far from Hamilton, called Coote's Paradise, from the delight which an officer of that name found in the myriads of ducks, &c., which thronged it thirty or forty years ago. .''< 3^5 CHAPTER XX. Apple-bees— Orchards— Gorgeous display of apple-blossom — A meeting in the woods — The ague — Wild parsnips— Man lost in the woods. |E had a great deal of fun when our orchard got up a little, and when we were able to trade with our neighbours for fruit, in what they used to call * apple-paring bees.' The young folks of both sexes were invited for a given evening in the autumn, and came duly provided with apple-parers, which are ingenious contrivances, by which an apple, stuck on two prongs at one end, is pared by a few turns of a handle at the other. It is astonishing to see how quickly it is done. Nor is the paring all. The little machine makes a final thrust through the heart of the apple, and takes out the core, so as to leave nothing to do but to cut what remains in pieces. The object of all this paring is to get apples enough dried for tarts during winter, the pieces when cut being threaded in long strings, and hung up till they shrivel and get a leather-like look. When wanted for use, a little boiling makes them swell to their original size again, and brings back their softness. 326 Orchards, ■\^x I You may imagine how plentiful the fruit must be to make such a liberal use of it possible, as that which you see all through Canada. You can hardly go into any house in the bush, however poor, without having a large bowl of * apple sass ' set before you — that is, of apples boiled in maple sugar. The young folks make a grand night of it when the * bee ' comes oft". The laughing and frolic is unbounded ; some are busy with their sweethearts ; some, of a grosser mind, are no less busy with the apples, devouring a large pro- portion of what they pare; and the whole proceed- ings, in many cases, wind up with a dance on the barn- floor. While speaking of orchards and fruit, I am re- minded of the district along the River Thames, near Lake St Clair. To ride through it in June, when the apple-blossom was out, was a sight as beautiful as it was new to my old country eyes. A great rolling sea of white and red flowers rose and fell with the un- dulations of the landscape, the green lost in the uni- versal blossoming. So exhaustless, indeed, did it seem even to the farmers themselves, that you could not enter one of their houses without seeing quantities of it stuck into jugs and bowls of all sorts, as huge bouquets, like ordinary flowers, or as if, instead of the blossom of splendid apples, it had been only hawthorn. Canadian apples are indeed excellent — that is, the good kinds. You see thousands of bushels small and miserable enough, but they are used only for pigs, or A Meeting in the Woods. 327 for throwing by the cartload into cider-presses. The eating and cooking apples would make any one's mouth water to look at them — so large, so round, so finely tinted. As to flavour, there can surely be no- thing better. Families in towns buy them by the bar- rel : in the country, even a ploughman thinks no more , of eating them than if they were only transformed pota- toes. Sweet cider, in its season, is a very common drink in many parts. You meet it at the railway stations, and on little stands at the side of the street, and are offered it in private houses. Canada is indeed a great country for many kinds of fruit. I have already spoken of the peaches and grapes : the plums, damsons, melons, pears, and cherries, are equally good, and equally plentiful. Poor Hodge, who, in England, lived on a few shillings a week, and only heard of the fine things in orchards, feasts like a lord, when he emigrates, on all their choicest productions. They were wonderful people round us for their open-air meetings — very zealous and very noisy. I was on a visit at some distance in the summer-time, and came on a gathering in the woods. There were no ministers present, but some laymen conducted the services. All round, were waggons with the horses unyoked, and turned round to feed from the vehicles themselves, as mangers. Some of the intending hearers sat on the prostrate logs that lay here and there, others stood, and some remained in their con^ veyances. There was no preparation of benches, t 8 -J 9$ h i 328 The Ague, or convenience of any kind. It so happened that I came only at the close. The proceedings were over, and there was nothing going on, for some time, but a little conversation among the leaders. In one waggon 1 noticed a whole litter of pigs, and found, on asking liow they came to be there, that they belonged to a good woman who had no one with whom to leave them at home, and had brought them with her, that she might attend to their wants, and enjoy the meet- ings, at the same time. There were often open-air assemblies in the woods. Temperance societies, with bands of music, drew great crowds. Rough boards were provided for seats, and a rough platform did for the speeches. All the country side, old and young, went to them, for most of the people in the country districts are rigid teetotallers. There are poor drunk- ards enough, after all, but it is a wonder there are no more, when whiskey is only a shilling or eighteen- pence a gallon. The great plague of the river was the ague, which seized on a very large number. The poisonous va- pours that rise from the undrained soil, in which a great depth of vegetable matter lies rotting, must be the cause, for when a district gets settled, and opened to the sun, so that the surface is dried, it disappears. I never had it myself, I am happy to say, but all my brothers suffered from its attacks, and poor Eliza shivered with it for months together. It is really a dreadful disease. It begins with a burning fever, lyi/i^ Parsnips. 329 d that I ere over, ne, but a e waggon jn asking iged to a to leave her, that the meet- L open-air 2ties, with jh boards m did for id young, e country )or drunk- re are no eighteen- ue, which anous va- which a must be d opened isappears. at all my 5or Eliza really a ng fever, occasioning a thirst which cannot be satisfied by drinking any quantity of water, and when this passes off, every bone shakes, the teeth rattle, the whole frame quivers, with the most agonizing cold. All the bedclothes in the house are found to be insufficient to keep the sufferer warm. After a day's misery like this, the attack ceases, and does not return till the second day. Its weakening effects are terrible. If severe, the patient can do nothing even in the interval of the attacks, and they sometimes continue for seven and eight months together. The only real remedy known is quinine, and it is taken in quantities that astonish a stranger. Of late years there has been far less of the disease in the older districts than formerly, and it is to be hoped that, some day, it will disappear altogether, but meanwhile it is a dreadful evil. It used to be a common English disease, but it is now nearly un- known in most parts of our country. Oliver Cromwell died of it, and in Lincoln it was one of the most prevalent maladies. I remember meeting an old Englishwoman who firmly believed in the old recipe for its cure, of a spider steeped in a glass of wine and swallowed with it. That was the way, she said, it had been cured in her part, and nothing could be better ! A terrible misfortune befell a worthy man residing back from the river, one spring, through his son — a growing boy — eating some wild parsnips in ignorance of their being poisonous. The poor little fellow 11 ! ■\ . •! i . 1 H 33^ Children in the Wood^. lingered for a time, and at last died in agony. This must be reckoned among the risks families run in the bush. I have known a number of cases of a similar kind. One day we were startled by a man crying to us from the road that two children of a settler, a few miles back, were lost in the woods, and that all the neighbours were out, searching for them. We lost no time in hurrying to the place, and found that the news was only too true. The two little creatures — a sister and brother — had wandered into the woods to pull the early anemones, which come out with the wild leeks, by the sides of creeks and wet places, at the beginning of spring, and they had gradually run to one flower after another, till they were fairly lost. The excitement was terrible. Men and women alike left everything, to search for them. The forest was filled with the sound of their names, which voice after voice called out, in hopes of catching an an- swer. Night came, and all the searchers returned unsuccessful, but there were others who kindled lights, and spent the darkness in their kind efforts. But it was of no use. Two — three — ^four — five — six days passed, and the lost ones were still in the great silent woods. At last, on the seventh day, they came on them, but almost too late. The two were lying on the ground — the little girl dead, the boy far gone. Tender nursing, however, brought him round, and he was able to tell, after a while, that they -.1 Lost in the Woods, 331 I had wandered hither and thither, as long as they could, eating the wild leeks, bitter and burning as they are, until the two could go no further. He did not know that his sister was dead till they told him. It was touching to see his father and mother swayed by the opposite feelings of grief for the dead and joy for the living. Another time, in the winter, on a piercingly cold night, we were roused from our seats round the fire, by the cries of some one at a distance. Going to the door, we found it was an unfortunate fellow who had got bewildered by the snow covering the waggon tracks in a path through the bush, and who was trying to make himself heard, before the neighbours went to bed. It was lucky for him we had not done so, for our hours were very early indeed. It was so cold that we could only stand a few minutes at the door by turns, but we answered his cries, and had the satisfaction of finding that he was getting nearer and nearer the open. At last, after about half an houi, he reached the high road, and was safe. But the fellow actually had not politeness to come up next day, or any time after, to say he was obliged by our saving his life. A poor woman, not far from us, had lost her hus • band in the forest, many years before, under circum- stances of peculiar trial. She was then newly married, and a stranger in the country, and he had gone out to chop wood at some distance from their house, but *K%\ ;• 11 33'- Lost in the Woods. \ !■ 1 ^;! liail been unable to find his way back. His wife and ;he neighbours searched long and earnestly for him, but their utmost efforts failed to find him. Months ])assed on, and not a word was heard of him until, at last, after more than a year, some persons came upon a human skeleton, many miles from the place, lying in the woods, with an axe at its side, the clothes on which showed that it was the long-lost man. He had wandered farther and farther from his home, living on whatever he could get in the woods, till death, at last, ended his sorrows. I shall never forget the story of a man who had been lost for many days, but had, at last, luckily wandered near some human habitations, and bad escaped. He was a timber-squarer — that is, he squared the great trees which were intended for ex- portation, the squaring making them lie closely to- gether, and thus effecting a saving in freight, and had been employed on the Georgian Bay, amongst the huge pine forests from which so many of those won- derful masts, so much prized, are brought. His cabin was at a good distance from his work, which lay now at one point, and now at another. Fortunately it was fine mild autumn weather, else he would have paid with his life for his misadventure. On the morning of the unfortunate day, he had set out at a very early hour,leaving his wife and family in the expectation that he would return at night, or within a few days at most. For a great wonder, a fog chanced to be lying on the Lost in tlic Woods. ^^^l ground, hidiiitj everything at a few yards' distance, but he took it for granted that he knew the road and never thought of any danger. On, therefore, he walked for some time, expecting, every moment, to come on some indication of his approach to his place of work. At last, the fog rose, and, to his surprise, showed that he had walked till nearly noon, and was in a spot totally unknown to him. Every tree around seemed the counterpart of its neighbour, and flowers and ferns were on all sides the same; nothing offered any distingin'shing marks by which to help him to decide where he was. The path along which he had walked was a simple trail, the mere beaten footsteps of woodmen or Indians passing occasionally, and to add to his perplexity, every here and there other trails crossed it, at different angles, with nothing to dis- tinguish the one from the other. It was not for some hours more, however, that he began to feel alarmed. He took it for granted he had gone too far, or had turned a little to one side, and that he had only to go back, to come to the place he wished to reach. Back, accordingly, he forthwith turned, resting only to eat his dinner which he had brought with him from home. But, to his utter dis- may, he saw the sun getting lower and lower, without any sign of his nearing his * limit.' Grey shades began to stretch through the trees: the silence around became more oppressive as they increased ; the long white moss on the trees, as he passed a swamp, looked I* i1 « r ^n II ik !, ' 334 Los^ in the Woods. the very image of desolation ; and, at last, he felt convinced that he was lost. As evening closed, every living thing around him seemed happy but he. Like the castaway on the ocean, who sees the sea-birds skimming the hollows of the waves or toppling over their crests, joyful, as if they felt at home, he noticed the squirrels disappearing in their holes; the crows flying lazily to their roosts ; all the creatures of the day betaking themselves to their rest. There was no moon that night, and if there had been, he was too tired to walk further by its light. He could do no more than remain where he was till the morning came again. Sitting down with his back against a great tree, he thought of everything by turns. Turning round, he prayed on his bended knees, then sat down again in his awful loneliness. Phosphoric lights gleamed from the decayed trees on the ground ; myriads of insects filled the air, and the hooting of owls, and the sweep of night-hawks and bats, served to fill his mind with gloomy fears, but ever and anon, his mind reverted to happier thoughts, and to a growing feeling of confidence that he should regain his way on the morrow. With the first light he was on his feet once more, after offering a prayer to his Maker, asking His help in this terrible trial. He had ceased to conjecture where he was, and had lost even the aid of a vague track. Nevertheless, if he could only push on, he thought he must surely effect his escape before long. Lost ill the Woods. ?>hS he felt d, every \. Like ;ea-birds ng over noticed e crows the day- was no was too 10 more e again, tree, he and, he n in his :om the ts filled ^eep of d with everted ling of on the more, is help jecture vague 3n, he ; long. The sun had a great sweep to make, and he was young and strong. Faster and faster he pressed forwards as the hours passed, the agony of his mind driving him on the more hurriedly as his hopes grew fainter. Fatigue, anxiety, and hunger were meanwhile growing more and more unbearable. His nerves seemed fairly unstrung, and as he threw himself on the ground to spend a second ;iight in the wilderness, the shadow of death seemed to lower over him. Frantic at his awful position, he tore his hair, and beat his breast, and wept like a child. He might, he knew, be near home, but he might, on the other hand, be far distant from it. He had walked fifty miles he was sure, and where in this interminable wilderness had he reached ? His only food through the day had been some wild fruits and berries, which were very scarce, and so acrid that tliey pained his gums as he ate them. He had passed no stream, but had found water in holes of fallen trees. What he suffered that night no one can realize who has not been in some similar extremity. He had no weapon but his axe, and hence, even if he came upon deer or other creatures, he could not kill them — there seemed no ^^•ay to get out of the horrible labyrinth in which he was now shut up. From the morning of the third day his mind he assured me, became so be- wildered that he could recollect very little of what then took place. How he lived he could hardly say — it must have been on frogs, and snakes, and grass.. and weeds, as well as berries, for there were too few 33^ Lost in the Woods, of these last to keep him alive. Once he was fortunate enough to come on a tortoise, which he could not resist the temptation to kill, though he knew that if he followed it quietly it would guide him to some stream, and thus afford him the means of escape. Its raw llesh gave him two great meals. His clothes were in tatters, his face begrimed, his hair and beard matted, his eyes hot and bloodshot, and his strength was fail- ing fast. On the tenth day he thought he could go no farther, but must lie down and die. But deliver- ance was now at hand. As he lay, half unconscious from weakness of body and nervous exhaustion, he fancied he heard the dip of oars. In an instant every faculty was revived. His ear seemed to gather un- natural quickness; he could have heard the faintest sound at a great distance. Mustering all his strength, he rose, and with the utmost haste made for the direction from which the cheering sound proceeded. Down some slopes — up opposite banks — and there at last the broad water lay before him. He could not rest with the mere vision of hope, so on he rushed through the thick brush, over the fretting of fallen timber and the brown carpet of leaves, till he reached the river-bank, which was sloping at the point where he emerged, a tongue of land jutting out into the water, clear of trees. To the end of this, ^vith anxiety indescribable, he ran, and kneeled in the attitude of prayer at once to God for his merciful deliverance, and to man, when the boat should come, whose ai> Lost in tJie Woods, 337 proacli he now heard more clearly froai afar,— that he might be taken to some human dwelling. The boat did come— his feeble cry reached it, and in a moment, when they saw his thin arms waving for help as lie kneeled before them, the bows were turned to the shore, and he was taken on board— the lost one- found ! He fainted as soon as he was rescued, and such was his state of exhaustion, that at first it seemed almost impossible to revive him. But by the care of his wife, to wlu)m he was restored as soon as possible, he gradually gathered strength, and when I saw him' some years afier was hearty and vigorous. The place where he was found was full thirty miles from his owji house, and he must have wandered altogether at least a hundred and fifty miles— probably in a series of circles round nearly the same pohits. 33 j > 1 • 1 ■ *j i i 1 33^ CHAPTER XXI. 1^ s I ■ I'M iii (,! it! A tornado^Bats — Deserted lots— American inquisitiveness — An election agent. HAVE already spoken of the belt of trees running back some miles from us, fami- liarly called 'The Windfall/ from their having been thrown down by a hurricane many years before. Some years after, when living for a time in another part of the province, I had a vivid illustration of what these terrible storms really are. It was a fine day, and I was jogging along quietly on my horse. It was in the height of summer, and every- thing around was in all the glory of the season. The tall mints, with their bright flowers, the lofty Aaron's rod, the beautiful Virginia creeper, the wild convol- vulus, and wild roses, covered the roadsides, and ran, as far as the light permitted them, into the openings of the forest. The country was a long roll of gentle un- dulations, with clear streamlets every here and there in the hollows. The woods themselves presented a per- petual picture of beauty as I rode along. High above, rose the gi*eat oaks, and elms, and beeches, and maples, with their tall trunks free of branches till they m [■ ] ^ A Tornado. 339 stretched far o\erhead ; wliile round their feet, not too thickly, but in such abundance as made the scene perfect, waved young trees of all these kinds inter- mixed with silver birches and sumachs. My horse had stopped of his own accord to drink at one of the brooks that brawled under the rude bridges across the road, when, happening to look up, I noticed a strange appearance in the sky, which I had not ob- served before. A thick haze was descending on the earth, like the darkness that precedes a storm. Yet there was no other sign of any approaching convul- sion of nature. There was a profound hush and gloom, but what it might forebode did not as yet appear. I was not, however, left long in ignorance. Scarcely had my horse taken its last draught and forded across the brook, than a low murmuring sound in the air, coming from a distance, and unlike anything I had ever healrd before, arrested my attention. A yellow spot in the haze towards the south-west likewise at- tracted my notice. The next moment the tops of the taller trees began to swing in the wind, which presently increased in force, and the light branches and twigs began to break off. I was glad I happened to be at an open spot, out of reach of immediate danger, the edges of the brook being cleared for some distance on both sides. Two minutes more, and the storm burst on the forest in all its violence. Huge trees swayed to and fro under its rude shock like the masts of ships on a tempestuous sea ; they rubbed i! I-: II it 340 A Tornado. w t* ^ 1 and creaked like a ship's timbers when she rolls, and the sky grew darker and darker, as if obscured by a total eclipse of the sun. It was evident that the fury of the storm would not sweep through the open where I stood, but would spend itself on the woods before me. Meanwhile, as I looked, the huge oaks and maples bent before the tornado, the air was thick with] their huge limbs, twisted off in a moment, and the trees themselves were falling in hundreds beneath the irresistible power of the storm. I noticed that they always fell with their heads in the direction of the hurricane, as if they had been wrenched round and flung behind it as it passed. Some went down bodily, others broke across, all yielded and sank in ruin and confusion. The air got blacker and blacker — a cloud of branches and limbs of trees filled the whole breadth of the tempest, some of them flung by it, every now and then, high up in the air, or dashed with amazing violence to the ground. A few minutes more, and it swept on to make similar havoc in other parts. But it was long before the air was clear of the wreck of the forest. The smaller branches seemed to float in it as if upheld by some current that was sucked on by the hurricane, though unfelt on the surface of the ground. In a surprisingly short time a belt of the woods, about an eighth of a mile in breadth, and running I cannot tell how far back, was one vast chaos, through which no human efforts could • f ; I t A Tornado. 341 find a way. The same night, as we after\\ar(l.s learned, the tornado had struck points incredibly dis- tant, taking avast sweep across Lake Ontario, ravagiiii; a part of New York, and finally rushing away to tlic north in the neighbourhood of Quebec. The destruction it caused was not limited to lis ravages in the forest ; farmhouses, barns, orchards, and fences, were swept away like chaff. I passed one orchard in which ^every tree had been dragged up and blown away ; the fences for miles, in the path of the storm, were carried into the air like straws, never to be found again ; the water in a mill-pond by the roadside was lifted fairly out of it, and the bottom left bare. At one place a barn and stables had been wrenched into fragments, the contents scat- tered to the winds, and the very horses lifted into the air, and carried some distance. Saw-mills were stripped of their whole stock of * lumber,' every plank being swept up into the vortex, and strewn no one knew whither. There were incidents as curious as ext .lordinary in the events of the day. A sheep was found on one farm, uninjured, beneath a huge iron kettle, which had been carried off and capsized over the poor animal, as if in sport. Wherever the storm passed through the forest was, from that mo- ment, a tangled desolation, left to itself, except by the beasts that might choose a safe covert in its re- cesses. Thenceforth, the briars and bushes would I - I 342 Bats, U have it for their own, and grow undisturbed. No human footstep would ever turn towards it till all the standing forest around had been cut down. The bats were very plentiful in summer, and used often to fly into the house, to the great terror of my sister Margaret, who used to be as afraid of a bat as Buflfor was of a squirrel. They were no larger than our English bats, and undistinguishable from them to an ordinary eye. Almost as often as we went out on the fine'warm evenings, we were attracted by their fly- ing hither and thither below the branches of the trees, or out in the open ground, beating the air with great rapidity with their wonderful membranous wings. A bird peculiar to America used to divide attention with them in the twilight — the famous * whip-poor-will,' one of the family of the goatsuckers ; of which, in Eng- land, the night-jar is a well-known example. It is amazing how distinctly the curious sounds, from which it takes its name, are given ; they are repeated incess- antly, and create no little amusement when they come from a number of birds at once. The flight of the whip-poor-will is very rapid, and they double, and twist, and turn in a surprising way. Their food is the larger moths and insects, any of which, I should think, they could swallow, for it is true in their case at least, that their * mouth is from ear to ear.' The gape is enormous, reaching even behind the eye ; and woe betide any unfortunate moths or chaffers that may cross their path. It sees perfectly by night, but is purblind Deserted Lots. 343 by day, its huge eye showing, the moment you see it, that, like that of the owls, it is for service in partial darkness. The light completely confuses it, so that, until sunset, it is never seen, unless when one comes by accident upon its resting-place, where it sits sleep- ing on some log or low branch, from which it will only fly a very short distance if disturbed, alighting again as soon as possible, and dozing off forthwith. They used to come in June, and enliven the evenings till September, when they left us again for the south. Some people used to think it fine sport to shoot birds so swift of flight ; but, somehow, I could never bring myself to touch creatures that spoke my own language, however imperfectly. Immediately behind our lot was one which often struck me as very desolate-looking when I had to go to it to bring home the cows at night. A field had been cleared, and a house built, but both field and house were deserted : long swamp grass grew thick in the hollows ; nettles, and roses, and bushes of all kinds, climbed up, outside and in ; the roof was gone, and only the four walls were left. I never learned more than the name of the person who had expended so much labour on the place, and then abandoned it. But there were other spots just like it all over the bush ; spots where settlers had begun with high hopes \ had worked hard for a time, until they lost heart, or had been stopped by some insurmountable obstacle, and had deserted the home they had once been so It 344 American Inqttisithmiess. *5 proud of. One case I knew was caused by a touching incident of bush-life. A young, hearty man, had gone •out in the morning to chop at his clearing, but had not returned at dinner, and was found by his wife, when she went to look for him, lying on his back, dead, with a tree he had felled resting on his breast. It had slipped back, perhaps, off the stump in falling, and had crushed him beneath it. What agony such an accident in such circumstances must have caused to the sufferer ! The poor fellow's wife could do no- thing even towards extricating her husband's body, but had to leave it there dll the neighbours came, and chopped the tree in two, so that it could be got away. No wonder she * sold out,* and left the scene of so great a calamity. P'.very one has heard of the inquisitiveness of both Scotchmen and Americans. I allude more particularly to those of the humbler ranks. I have often laughed at the examples we met with in our intercourse not only with these races, but with the less polished of others, also, in Canada. I was going down to Detroit on the little steamer which used to run between that town and Lake Huron — a steamer so small that it was currently reported among the boys, that one very stout lady in the township had made it lurch when she went on board — and had got on the upper deck to look round. The little American village on the opposite side was * called at,' and left, in a very few minutes, and we were off again past the low shores of the river. Avicrican Inqiiisitiveness. 345 A little pug-nosed man, in a white hat and white linen jacket, was the only one up beside me ; and it was not in his nature, evidently, that we should be long without talking. * Fine captain on this here boat ? ' said he. I agreed with hini offliand ; that is, I took it for granted he was so. * Yes, he's the likeliest captain I've seen since I left Ohio. How plain you see whar the boat run — look ! Well we're leaving County- Seat right straight, I guess. Whar you born ? ' ' Where do you think ? ' I answered. ' Either Ireland or Scotland, anyhow.' * No. You're Irish, at any rate, I suppose ? ' — I struck in. ' No, sirr — no, sirree — I'm Yankee bom, and bred in Yankee town, and my parents afore me. Are you travelling altogether? * I asked him what he meant, for I really didn't under- stand this question. 'Why travelling for a living — ■ what do you sell ? ' On my telling him he was wrong for once, he seemed a little confounded ; but presently recovered, and drew a bottle out of his breast-pocket, adding, as he did so — * Will you take some bitters ? ' I thanked him, and said, I was ' temperance.' * You don't drink none, then ? Well, I do ; ' on which he suited the action to the word, putting the bottle back in its place again, after duly wiping his lips on his cuft'. But his. questions were not done yet. *Whar you live ? ' I told him. * Married man ? ' I said I had not the happiness of being so. * How long since you came from England ? * I answered. * You remember when you came?' I said I hoped I did, else my 34<^ An Election Anait. |i I I s faculties must be fliiling. * I guess you were pretty long on tlie waters ? ' But I was getting tired of his impudence, and so gave him a laconic answer, and dived into the cabin out of his way. I was very much amused at a rencontre between the * captain,' who seemed a really respectable man, and another of the passengers, who, it appeared, had come on board without having money to pay his fare. The offender was dressed in an unbleached linen blouse, with * dandy ' trowsers, wide across the body, and tapering to the feet, with worn straps of the same material \ old boots of a fashionable make, an open waistcoat, and an immensity of dirty-white shirt- breast ; a straw hat, and a long green and lilac ribbon round it. A cigar in his mouth, a mock ring on his fmger, and a very bloodshot eye, completed the picture. It seemed he was a subordinate electioneering agent, sent round to make stump speeches for his party, and, generally, to influence votes ; and the trouble with the captain evidently rose from his wishing to have his fare charged to the committee who sent him out, rather than pay it himself. The captain certainly gave him no quarter. * He's a low, drunken watchmaker,' said he, turning to me ; I saw him last night spouting away for General Cass on the steps of the church at Huron. The fellow wants to get off without paying — I suppose we'll have to let him.' And he did. He got through to the journey's end. 347 CHAPTER XXII. A journey to Niagara — River St Clair — Detroit — A slave's cs-^ape — An American steamer — Description of the Falljiof Niagara — Fearful catastrophe. |HE country on the St Clair, though beauti- ful from the presence of the river, was, in itself, flat and tame enough. All Canada West, indeed, is remarkably level. The ridge of limestone hills which runs across from the State of New York at Niagara, and stretches to the north, is the only elevation greater than the round swells, which, in some parts, make the* landscape look like a succession of broad black waves. The borders of the St Clair itself were higher than the land imme- diately behind them, so that a belt of swamp ran parallel with the stream, rich reaches of black soil rising behind it, through township after township. The list of natural sights in such a part was not great, though the charms of the few there were were unfad- ing. There was the river itself, and there was the vast leafy ocean of tree-tops, with the great aisles with in- numerable pillars stretching away underneath like some vast cathedral of nature; but these were common i .) i i ! I 348 Ddroil. V'A >-}-i\ i :, I .Pli . i to all the country. The One Wonder of tlic land was at a distance. It was Niagara. How we longed to see it ! But it was some years before any of us could, and there was no opportunity of going together, I had to set out by myself. It was in the month of September, just before the leaves began to turn. The weather was glorious — not too warm, and as bright as in Italy. I started in the little steamer for Detroit, joassing the Indian settlement at Walpole Island, the broad flats covered with coarse grass, towards the entrance of Lake St Clair, and, at last, threading the lake itself, through the channel marked out across its shallow and muddy breadth, by long lines of poles^ like telegraphs on each side of a street. Detroit was the London of all the folks on the river. They bought everything they wanted there, it being easy of access, and its size offering a larger choice than could- be obtained elsewhere. It is a great and growing place ; though, in the lifetime of a person still living — General Cass — it was only the little French village which it had been for a hundred years before. Taking the steamer to Buffalo, which started in an hour or two after I got to Detroit, I was once more on my way as the afternoon was drawing to a close. We were to call at various British ports, so that I had a chance of seeing different parts of the province that I had not yet visited. The first step in our voyage was to cross to Sandwich, the village on the Canadian shore, opposite Detroit, from which it is less than a mile dis- A Slave s Escape. 349 tant. I was glad to see a spot so sacred to liberty — for Sandwich is the great point which the fugitive slaves, from every part of the Union, eagerly attempt to reach. I felt proud of my country at the tliought tliat it was no vain boast, but a glorious truth, thiU slaves could not breathe in England, nor on British soil; that the first touch of it by the foot of the bondsman broke his fetters and made him free for ever. I was so full of the thought, that when we were once more under weigh it naturally became the subject of conversation with an intelligent fellow- traveller, who had come on board at Sandwich. ' I was standing at my door,' said he, ' a week or two ago, when I saw a skiff with a man in it, rowing, in hot haste, to our side. How the oars flashed — how his back bent to them — how he pulled ! It was soon evident what was his object. As he came near, I saw he was a negro. Though no one was pursuing, he could not take it easy, and, at last, with a great bend, he swept up to the bank, pulled up the skiff, and ran up to the road, leaping, throwing up his hat in the air, shouting, singing, laughing — in short, fairly beside him- self with excitement. " I'm free ! I'm free ! — no more slave ! " was the burden of his loud rejoicing, and it was long before he calmed down enough for any one to ask him his story. He had come all the way up the Mississippi from Arkansas, travelling by niglit, lying in the woods by day, living on corn pulled from the fields or on poultry he could catch round flum- 1 ;■ 1 I- ',tf 1^1^ It' ■ 350 A Slaves Escape. houses or negro quarters ; sometimes eating them raw, lest the smoke of his fire should discover him. At last he reached Illinois, a free State, after long weeks of travel ; but here his worst troubles began. Not being able to give a very clear account of himself, they put him in jail as a " fugitive." But he gave a wrong name instead of his own, and a wrong State instead of that from which he had come. He told them, in fact, he had come from Maryland, which was at the very opposite side of the Union from Arkansas, and was kept in jail for a whole year, while] they were advertis- ing him, to try to get some owner to claim him, and they let him off only when none appeared in the whole twelve months. This ordeal passed, he gradu- ally made his way to Detroit, and now, after running such a terrible gauntlet, he had risen from a mere chattel _to be a man ! ' Seeing the interest I took in the incident, he went on to tell me others equally exciting. One which I remember, was the rescue of a slave from some officers who had discovered him in one of the frontier towns of the States, and were taking him, bound, like a sheep, to Buffalo, to carry him off to his master in the South. Indignant at such treatment of a fellow-man, a young Englishman, who had since been a member of the Canadian Parliament, and was then on the boat with him, determined, if possible, to cheat the men-stealers of their prey. Breaking his design to the coloured cook, and through him, getting the secret aid of all the other coloured All American Steamer Zh'' I 'ho lit, men on the boat, he waited till they reached Buffalo, some of the confederates having previously told the poor slave the scheme that was afoot. As the boat got alongside the wharf, seizing a moment when his guards had left him, the gallant young fellow effectu- ally severed the rope that bound the slave, and, telling him to follow him instantly, dashed over the gangway to the wharf, and leaped into a skiff which was lying at hand, with oars in it ready, the negro following at his heels in a moment ; then, pushing off, he struck out into the lake, and reached Canada safely with his living numph. The story made a thrill run through me. It was a brave deed daringly done. The risk was great, but the object was noble, and he must have had a fine spirit who braved the one to accomplish the other. The steamer itself was very different from those with which I had been familiar in England. Instead of cabins entirely below the deck, the body of the ship was reserved -or a dining-room, surrounded by berths, and one portion of it covered in for cargo ; the ladies' cabin was raised on the back part of the main deck, with a walk all round it ; then came an open space with sofas, which was like a hall or lobby for receiving passengers or letting them out. Next to this, at the sides, was a long set of offices, facing the engine-room in the centre, and reaching beyond the paddle-boxes, both the side and central structures being continued for some distance, to make places for ■> \ n ; 35^ All American Steamer. the cook's galley, for a bar for selling spirits and cigars, for a barber's shop, and for I know not what other conveniences. Covering in all these, an upper deck '.tretched the whole length of the ship, and on this rose the great cabin, a long room, provided with sofas, mirrors, carpets, a piano, and every detail of a huge drawing-room, — innumerable doors at each side open- ing into sleeping places for the gentlemen travellers. It was a fine sight, with its profusion of gilding and white paint on the walls and ceiling, its paintings on panels at regular intervals all round, 'is showy fr. mi- Ui!C, and its company of both sexes. You could get on the top even of this cabin, if you liked, or, if you thouglu you were high enough, might go out on the open space at each end, where seats in abundance awaited occupants. The whole structure, seen from the v.'harf when it stopped at any place, was liker a floating house than a ship, and seemed very strange to me at first, with its two stories above the deck, and its innumerable doors and windows, and its dazzling white colour from stem to stern. Such \'essels may do well enough for calm weather or for rivers, but they are far from safe in a storm at any distance from land. The wind catches them so fiercely on their great high works that they are like to capsize, when a low-built ship would be in no danger. Indeed, we had a proof of this on coming out of Buffalo to cross to Chippewa ; for as the wind luid blown during the night while we were ashore, A 71 American Steamer, o'^^ any like h no ning Iwind hore. we found when we started again next morning that the shallow water of that part of the lake was pretty rough, and our way leading us almost into the trougli of the waves, the boat swayed so much to cacli side alternately that the captain got all the passengers gathered in a body, and made them run from the low to the high side by turns, to keep it from swamping. The water was actually coming in on the main deck at every roll. It was very disagreeable to have such a tumbling about, but this ugly state of things did not last long. The smooth water of the Niagara was soon reached, and we were gliding down to within about three miles or so of the Falls, as quietly and carelessly as if no such awful gulf were so near. I could not help thinking how terrible it would have been had any accident injured our machinery in such a position. There certainly were no sails on the boat, and I greatly question if there was an anchor, the short distance of lier trips making one generally unnecessary. At last we got safely into Chippewa Creek, and all chance of danger had passed away. Long before reaching this haven of refuge, a white mist, steadily rising, and disappearing high in the air, had marked with unmistakable certainty our near ap- proach to the grand spectacle I had come to see. Never for a moment still, it had risen and sunk, grown broader and lighter, melted into one great cloud, or broken into waves of white vapour, from the time I had first seen it, and had made me restless till I ivas 23 I' t ? ! I 354 The Falls of Niagara, ^1 !■ ' V ^1; 11 ; 1 safely on shore. The sensation was painful — a kind of instinct of danger, and an uneasiness till it was past. Having nothing to detain me, I determined to lose no time in getting to the Falls themselves ; and therefore, leavifig my portmanteau to be sent on after me, I set out for them on foot. There is a beautiful broad road to the spot, and it was in ex- cellent order, as the fall rains had not yet com- menced, so that I jogged on merrily, and was soon at my journey's end at Drummondville, the village near the Falls, on the Canada side, where I resolved to stay for some days. One of the finest views of the great wonder burst upon my sight during this walk. On a sudden, at a turn of the road, an opening in the trees showed me the Falls from behind, in the very bend downwards to the gulf beneath. The awful gliding of the vast mass of waters into an abyss which, from that position, only showed its presence without revealing its depth, filled me with indescribable awe. Over the edge, whii icr, I as yet knew not, were de- scending, in unbroken volume, millions of tons of Trater. Above, rose the ever-changing clouds of vapour, like the smoke from a vast altar, and behind, looking up the river, were the struggling waves of the rapids, covering the whole breadth of the stream with bars of restless white. After seeing Niagara from every other point of view, I think this is one of the finest. The leap into the hidden depths has in it something awful beyond any power of description. The Falls of Niagara . ?>S^ You may be sure I did full justice to the oppor- tunities my visit afforded me, and kept afoot, day after day, with praiseworthy diligence. My first walk to the Falls, from the village, brought me, through a break in a sandy bank, to a spot from which nothing could be seen at the bottom of a gorge but the white foam of the American Fall. The trees filled each side of tlie descent, arching overhead, and made the vista even more beautiful than the wild outline of the bank itself would have been ; the water, like sparkling snow, drifting in long tongues down the face of the hidden rocks, filling up the whole view beyond. It depended on the position of the sun whether the picture were one of dazzling white or more or less dulled ; but at all times the falling water, broken into spray and partially blown back as it descended, by the force of the air, was one of sur- passing beauty. The American Fall, though nine hundred feet wide, has only a small part of the cur- rent passing over it, and it is this shallowness that makes it break into foam at the moment of its de- scent. Emerging on the road at the edge of the river, the great Horse-shoe was at once before me on my right hand. No wonder the Indians called it ' Ni- wa-gay-rah' — the 'Thunder of Waters.' A mass of a hundred millions of tons of water, falling a depth of a hundred and fifty feet in the course of a single hour, while you stand by, may well give such a sound as overwhelms the listener's sense of hearing. It is \ \ II ' ': '4] 356 The Falls of Niagara, •iffi: m ^K no use attempting to picture the scene. It was some time before I could go near the edge, but at last, when my head was less dizzy, I went out on the projecting point called the Table Rock, which has, however, long since fallen into the abyss, and there, on a mere ledge, from which all beneath had been eaten away by the spray, I could let the spectacle gradually fill my mind. You cannot see Niagara at once; it takes day after day to realize its vastncss. I was astonished at the slow unbroken fall of tlie water. So vast is the quantity hanging in the air at any one moment, that it moves down in a great green sheet, with a slow, awful descent. The patches of white formed in spots here and there showed how majestically it goes down to the abyss. Think of such a launching of a great river, two thousand feet in breadth, over a sudden precipice — the smooth flow above — the green crest — the massy solidity of the descent — and then the impenetrable clouds of watery spray that hide the bottom. Yet at the edge it was so shallow that one might have waded some steps into it without apparent danger. Indeed, I noticed men one day damming it back some feet, in a vain attempt to get out the body of a poor man who had leaped over. They hoped it would be found jammed among the rocks at the bottom, within reach, if this side water were forced back. But if it ever had been, it was since washed away, and no efiforts could recover it. Descending a spiral staircase close The Falls of Niagara. y:il to the Table Rock, I had another view from below ; and what words can convey the impression of the deep, trembling boom of the waters, as you caiiglit it thus confined in the abyss ? It was terrible to look into the cauldron, smoking, heaving, foaming, rush ing, as far as the eye could see througli tlie mist. A slope of fragments from the side of the rock offered a slippery path up to the thick curtain of the I'alls, and you could even go behind it if you' chose. But 1 had not nerve enough to do so, though several par- ties ventured in, after having put on oil-skin clothes ; guides, who live in part by the occupation, leading them on their way. Overhead, Table Rock reached far out, awaiting its fall, which I felt sure could not be long delayed. In crossing it I noticed a broad crack, which each successive year would, of course, deepen. On every ledge, up to the top of the pre- cipice, grass and flowers, nourished by the incessant spray, relieved the bareness, and in the middle of the river, dividing the Horse-shoe Fall from the American, the trees on Goat Island dimly showed themselves through the ascending smoke. The vast sweep of waters bending round the Horse-shoe for more than the third of a mile, was hemmed in at the further side by masses of rock, the lower end of Goat Island projecting roughly from the torrents at each side, so as to hide part of the more distant one from my sight. A hill of fragments from its face lay heaped up in the centre, and more thinly scattered at the M 1^ 358 The Falls of Niagara, 4;.\ farther side. But I could pay little attention to de- tails, with the huge cauldron within a few yards of me, into which the great green walls of water were being every moment precipitated, and which, broken into sheets of foam, hissed, and lashed, and raged, and boiled, in wild uproar, as far as my eye could reach. The contrast between the solemn calmness of the great sheet of green ever gliding down in the centre, with the curtain of sno^vy Avreaths at its edges, where the stream above, from its shallowness, broke into white crystalline rain in the moment of its first descent, and the tossing, smoking storm beneath, was over- powering, and — accompanied as it ever was with the stunning, deafening noise of three thousand six hundred millions of cubic feet of water falling in an hour, from so great a height — filled my mind with a sense of the a^vful majesty and power of God such as I scarcely remember to have felt elsewhere. Being anxious to cross to the American side, I walked down the side of the river, after having as- cended to the top of the bank, and at last, about a mile below, found a road running slowly do^vn to the level of the water, the slope having brought me back to within a comparatively short distance of the Fall. It would have been impossible to have reached this point by keeping along below, the broken heaps of rock making the way impracticable. The river at the place I had now gained is, however, so wonder- fully calm that a ferry-boat plies between the British ^^■«i^^ The Falls of Niagara. 359 and American shores, and by this I crossed. Some ladies who were in it seemed, at first, in some measure alarmed by the heaving of the water, but as the sur- face was unbroken, and reflection showed that it must be safe, they soon resigned themselves to the charms of the view around. Forthwith, the boat was in the centre of a vast semicircle of descending floods, more than three thousand feet in their sweep, and on the edge of the foaming sheets of the unfathomable gulf, into which they were thundering down. The grand cliff's on each side, the brown rocks of Goat Island in the midst, the fringe of huge trees in the distance on every hand, the clouds of spray which rose in thick smoke from the tormented waters — the whole pierced and lighted up by the rays of a glorious sun, made a scene of surpassing beauty. I could not, however, take my eyes for more than a moment from the overwhelming grandeur of the main feature in the picture. Still, down, in their awful, dense, stupendous floods, came the waters, gathered from the inland seas of a continent, pouring as if another deluge were about to overwhelm all things. But, high over them, in the ever-rising clouds of vapour, stretched a great rain-bow, as if to remind us of the solemn pledge i^iven of old, and the very edges of the mist glittered, as each beat of the oar sent us on, with a succession of prismatic colours, the broken fragments of others which shone for a moment and then passed away. The ascent at the American side was accomplished li ^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) / O A* € z. O 1.0 1.1 I£i|2j8 |25 £? U£ 12.0 H& |L25 1 1.4 11.6 < 6" ► Sdenoes Corporation : 1 WIST MAIN STMiT WIBSTIR.N.Y. U5I0 (716)I73-4S03 360 The Falls of Niagara, by a contrivance which I think must be almost unique. A strong wooden railroad has been laid, at a most perilous slope, from the bottom to the top of the cliff, and a conveyance which is simply three huge wooden steps on wheels, furnishes the means of ascent, a wheel at the top driven by water, twisting it up, by a cable passed round a windlass. I could not help shuddering at the consequence of any accident that might occur, from so precarious an arrangement. Goat Island is one of the great attractions on this farther side, and is reached by a bridge which makes one half forget the wildness of the gulf across which it is stretched. There is a house on the Island in which I found refreshments and Indian curiosities for sale, but as I was more interested in the Falls for tlie moment than in anything else, I pushed on by a path which turned to the right and led straight to them. A small island on the very edge of the precipice, and connected by a frail bridge with Goat Island, lay on my road. It was the scene of a very affecting accident in 1849. A gentleman from Buffalo had visited it along with his family and a young man of the name of Addington, and after looking over it, the party were about to leave the spot, when Addington, in his thoughtless spirits, suddenly took up one of the little children, a girl, in his arms, and held her over the edge of the bank, telling her that he was going to throw her in. The poor child, terrified, unfortunatly made a twist, and rolled out of his hands into the stream. The Falls of Niagara, 361 Poor Addington, in a moment, with a loud cry of horror, sprang in to save her, but both, ahnost before the others at their side knew that anything of so fearful a kind had happened, were swept into the abyss beneath. Beyond Goat Island, a singularly daring structure has enabled visitors to cross to some scatter- ed masses of rock on the very brink of the Great Fall. A tower has been erected on them, and a slight bridge, which is always wet with the spray, has been stretched across to it. From this point the whole extent of the Falls is before you. It was an awful sight to look down on the rushing terrors at my feet. I felt confused, ovenvhelmed, and almost stunned. Once after, on another visit, I clambered out to it over the mounds of ice in winter, but I hardly know that the impression was deeper then. There are accidents every now and then at Niagara, but it is oniy wonderful that, amidst such dangers, there are no more. The truth is that here, as well as elsewhere, familiarity breeds contempt. Thus, in 1854, a man ventured, with his son, to cross the rapids above the Falls, in a skiff, to save some property which hap- pened to be on a flat-bottomed * scow,' which had broken from its moorings, and stuck fast at some distance above Goat Island. The two shot out into the broken water, and were carried with terrible s\nft- ness down towards the 'scow,' into which the son sprang as they shot past, fastening the skiff to it as he did so. Having taken off the goods they wished to 3^^ The Falls of Niagara, %n save, the skiff, with both on board, was once more pushed off, and flew like an arrow on the foaming water, towards the Three Sisters — the name of some rocks above Goat Island. The fate of the two men seemed to be sealed, for they were nearing the centre Fall, and, to go over it, would be instant death. But they managed, when on its very verge, to push into an eddy, and reached the second Sister. On this, they landed, and having dragged ashore the skiff, car- ried it to the foot of the island, a proof that the 'property' they wished to rescue could not have weighed very much. There, they once more launched it, and making a bold sweep do\vn the rapids, their oars going with their utmost strength, they succeeded in reaching the shore of Goat Island in safety, though it seems to me as if, after thus tempting their fate, they hardly deserved to do so. I was very much struck by the appearance of the rapids above the Falls, on a visit I made to an island some distance up the river, in the very middle of them. A fine broad bridge, built by the o\vner 6f the island, and of the neighbouring shore, enables you to reach it with ease. It lies about half-way between Chippewa and the Falls, on the British side. The whole surface of the great stream is broken into a long cascade, each leap of which is made with more swiftness than the one before. It is a wild tumultuous scene, and forms a fit prelude to the spectacle to which it leads. Acci- dents occasionally happen here also. Just before I The Falls of Niagara, ?>^l visited it, a little child had strayed from a party witli whom she was, and must have fallen into the stream, as she was never seen again after being missed. Some years ago, a number of people in the neigh- bourhood formed the strange wish to see a boat laden with a variety of animals, go down these rapids and over the Falls. It was a cruel and idle curiosity which could dictate such a thought, but they managed to get money enough to purchase a bear and some other animals, which were duly launched, unpiloted, from the shore near Chippewa. From whatever instinctive sense of danger it would be impossible to say, the creatures appeared very soon to be alarmed. The bear jumped overboard on seeing the mist of the Falls, as the people on the spot say, and by great efforts^ managed to swim across so far that he was carried down to Goat Island. The other animals likewise tried to escape, but in vain. The only living creatures that remained in the boat were some geese, which could not have escaped if they had wished, their wings having been cut short. They went over, and several were killed at once, though, curiously enough, some managed, by fluttering, to get beyond the crushing blow of the descending water, and reached the shor? in safety. if 3^4 jBg CHAPTER XXIII. Tlie suspension-bridge at Niagara — The whirlpool — The baUlo of Lundy's Lane — Brock's monument — A soldier r.cariy drowned. iWO miles below the Falls an attraction presents itself now, that was not in exist- ence when I first visited them, though I have seen it often since ; the Great Sus- pension Bridge over the chasm through which the river flows below. Made entirely of iron wire, twisted into ropes and cables of all sizes, the largest measur- ing ten inches through, and containing about four thousand miles of wire, it stretches in a road twenty- four feet in breadth, in two stories, the under one for foot passengers and carriages, the other, twenty-eight feet above it, for a steady stream of railway trains, at the height of two hundred and fifty feet over the deep rushing waters, for eight hundred feet, from the Cana- dian to the American shore. Two huge towers, rising nearly ninety feet on the American side, and nearly eighty on the British, bear up the vast fabric, which is firmly anchored in solid masonry built into the ground beyond. It is hard to believe what is nevertheless The WhirlpooL Z^S the flict, that the airy and elegant thing thus hanging over the gulf is by no means so light as it looks, but weighs fully eight hundred tons. When you step on it and feel it tremble beneath any passing waggon, the thought of trains going over it seems like sending them to certain destruction. Yet they do go, hour after hour, and have done so safely for years, the only precaution observed being to creep along at the slow- est walk. It is open at the sides — that js, you can see up and down the river, and over into the awful abyss, but my head is not steady enough to stand looking into such a depth. How Blondin could pass over on his rope has always been incomprehensible to me ; the bridge itself was not broad enough for my nerves. Yet he performed his wonderful feat again and again, close by, and each time with accumulated difficulties, until, when the Prince of Wales visited Niagara, he actually carried over a man on his back from the Canadian to the American side, and came back on stilts a yard high, playing all kinds of antics by the way. Every one has heard of the whirlpool at the Falls, and most of the visitors go down the three mil^s to it. To be like others, I also strolled down, but I was greatly disappointed. I had formed in my mind a very highly-wrought picture of a terrible roaring vortex, flying round in foam, at the rate of a great many miles an hour ; but instead, I found a turn in the channel, which they told me was the whirlpool ; ; i 366 The Whirlpool, though, to my notion, it needed the name to be written over it to enable one to know what it was, like the badly-painted sign, on which the artist informed the passer-by, in large letters, * This is a horse.' I dare say it would have whirled quite enough for my taste had I been in it, but from the brow of the chasm it seems to take things very leisurelyUndeed, as if it were treacle, rather than water. There are stories about the strength of the current, however, that shows it to be greater than is apparent from a little distance. A deserter, some years ago, tried to get over below the Falls to the American side on no better convey- ance than a huge plank. But the stream was stronger than he had supposed ; and in spite of all his efforts, he wac forced down to this circling horror, which speedily sent him and his plank round and round in gradually contracting whirls, until, after a time, they reached the centre. There was no pushing out, and the poor wretch was kept revolving, ^vith each end of his support sunk in the vortex by turns, requiring him to crawl backwards and forwards unceasingly for more than a day, before means were found to bring him to land. Somebody said at the time that he would surely become an expert circumnavigator after such a training ; but his miraculous escape has most probably not induced many others to make the same venturesome voyage. The village of Drummondville, a little back from the Falls, on the British side, is memorable as the scene of the Battle of Lundy's Lane, in the war of A Sad Mistake. 367 181 2 — 1 81 4. I was fortunate enough to meet with an intelligent man who, when a boy, had seen the battle from a distance ; and he went with me over the ground. In passing through a garden, in which a fine crop of Indian corn was waving, he stopped to tell me that on the evening after the battle, he saw a number of soldiers come to this spot, which was then an open field, and commence digging a great pit. Curious to know all they were doing, he went up and stood beside them, and found it was a grave for a number of poor fellows who had been shot by mistake in the darkness of the night before. An aide-de-camp had been sent off in hot haste down to Queenston from the battle, to order up reinforcements as quickly as possible, and had been obeyed so promptly that our forces on the field could not believe they had come when they heard them marching up the hill, but supposing they must be Americans, fired a volley of both cannon and musketry into their ranks. There they lie now, without any memorial, in a private garden, which is dug up every year, and replanted over their bones, as if there were no such wreck of brave hearts sleeping below. In the churchyard there were a number of tablets of wood, instead of stone, marking the graves of officers slain in the conflict. I picked up more than one which had rotted ofif at the ground, and were lying wherever the wind had carried them. Peach-trees, laden with fruit, hung over and amidst the graves, and sheep were nibbling the grass. I( 368 The Seneca hidians. But what seemed the most vivid reminiscence of tae strife was a wooden house, to wliich my guide led mc, the sides and ends of which were perforated with a great number of holes made on the day by muskct-balls ; a larger hole here and there, showing wliere a cannon had also sent its missile through it. I was surprised to see it inhabited wifh so many apertures unstopped out- side ; but perhaps it was plastered within. Every part of the Niagara frontier has, indeed, its own story of war and death. On the way to Queens- ton I passed a gloomy chasm, into which the waters of a small stream, called the Bloody Run, fall, on their course to the river. It got its name from an incident in the old French war, very characteristic of the times and the country. A detachment of British troops was marching up the banks of the Niagara with a convoy of waggons, and had reached this point, when a band of Seneca Indians, in the service of ihc French, leaped out from the woods immediately over the pre- ci])ice, and uttering from all sides their terrible war- whoop, rushed down, pouring in a deadly volley as they closed, and hurled them and all they had, soldiers, waggons, horses, and drivers, over the cliff into the abyss below, where they were dashed to pieces on the rocks. It was the work almost of a moment; they were gone before they could collect themselves to- gether, or realize their position. The littld' stream was red with their blood, and out of the whole number only two escaped — the one a soldier, who, as by Brock's Monument, 369 miracle, got back, under cover of night, to Fort Ni- agara, at the edge of Lake Ontario ; the other a gentle- man, who spurred his horse through the horde of savages on the first moment of the alanr, and got ofif in safety. My attention was drawn, as I got farther on, to the monument of General Brock, killed at the battle of Queenston, in 181 2, which stands near the village of that name, on a fine height close to the edge of the river. It is a beautiful oljject when viewed from a distance, and no less so on a near approach, and is, I think, as yet, the only public monument in the western province. I had often heard it spoken of with admiration before I saw it, and could easily understand why it was so. I could not but feel that besides being a tribute to the memory of the illustrious dead, it served also to keep alive through successive generations an enthusiastic feeling of patriotism and of a resolute devotion to duty. Taking the steamer at Queenston, which is a small, lifeless place, I now struck out on the waters of Ontario, to see Toronto once more. As we entered the lake, I was amused by the remark of an Irish lad, evidently fresh from his native island. Leaning close by me over the side of the vessel, he suddenly turned round from a deep musing, in which he had been absorbed, and broke out — * Och, sir ! what a dale o' fine land thim lakes cover!' Such a thought in a country where a boundless wilderness stretches so closely in one unbroken line, seemed inexpressibly 370 A Soldier nearly Droivned, ludicrous, not to speak of the uselessness of. all the liincl that was * uncovered/ if there had been no lakes to facilitate passage from one pointy to another. As we left the wharf at the town cf Niagara, which stands at the mouth of the river, on the lake, a great stir wos caused for a short time by a soldier of the Rifles having been tumbled into the water, and nearly drowned, through the stupidity of a poor Connaught- man who was in charge of the plank by which those who were having the steamer, before she started, were to reacli the shore. He was in such a breathless hurry and wild excitement, that he would hardly leave it in its place while the visitors were crowding out ; once and again he had made a snatch at it, only to have some one put his foot on it, and nm off. At last the soldier came, but just as he made a step on it the fellow who had his face to the shore, and saw no- thing except the crowd, gave it a pull, and down went the man into the water, cutting his chin badly in fall- ing. He evidently could not swim, and sank almost at once, but he came up to find ropes thrown out to him to cling to. But somehow he could not catch them, and he would, in another moment, have gone down' again. Luckily, however, some one had sense enough to thrust down a broad ladder, which was standing near, and up this he managed to climb, we holding the top steadily till he did so. Every attention was instantly paid him j and I dare say the mishap did him no harm beyond the ducking. In a A Co/oncfs Ki/Khiess, 37^ few minutes he was ashore again ; and I was dch'ghted to see the colonel, who happened to be present, give him iiis arm, and walk away with him, talking kindly to him as they went. t« . i i, 'iV- CHAPTER XXIV. The Canadian lakes — The exile's love of home — The coloured people in Canada — Rice — The Maid of the Mist — Home-spun cloth — A narrow road — A grumbler — New England emigrants — a potato-pit — The winter's wood. IHAT vast sheets of water the lakes of Canada are ! Beginning, in the far north- west, with Superior, nearly as large as all Scotland, we have Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, in succession, each more like a sea than a lake. On crossing them, you have no land in sight any more than on the ocean ; and, like it, they have whole fleets on them, all through the season of naviga- tion. They yield vast sums from their fisheries, and their waves wash shores as extensive as those of many kingdoms. It is striking how gigantic is the proportion of everything in nature in the New World. Vast lakes and rivers, the wonderful Niagara, end- less forests, and boundless prairies — ^all these form a great contrast to the aspects of nature in Europe. The chain of lakes, altogether, stretch over more than a thousand miles, with very short intervals between any of them, and none between some. 'Tr^^^^>-. It • The Exiles Love of Home. 3 73 Even Ontario, which is the smallest, is nine times as long, and from twice to four times as broad, as the sea between Dover and Calais. I could not help thinking of the fact that there were men still living who remembered when the Indians had possession of nearly all the shore of Lake Ontario, and when only two or three of their wigwams stood on the site of the town to which I was then sailing. I found Toronto much increased since my first visit to it — its streets macadamized in some places, pave- ments of plank laid down on the sides of several, the houses better, and the shops more attractive. When we first came, it was as muddy a place as could be imagined; but a few years work wonders in a new country like Canada. There was now no fear of a lady losing her India-rubber overshoes in crossing the street, as one of my sisters had done on our first coming, nor were waggons to be seen stuck hard and fast in the very heart of the town. I found my married sister comfortably established, and spent a very pleasant time with her and her husband. There is, however, not much to see in Toronto even now, and still less at that time. It lies very low near the lake, though the ground rises as it recedes from it. The neighbourhood is rather uninteresting, to my taste, from the tameness of the scenery. It is an English town, however, in its feelings and out- ward life, and that made it delightful. It is beau- tiful to see how true-hearted nearly every one be- i- 374 Loyalty of the Canadians. comes to his mother-country when he has left it. There has often seemed to me to be more real love of Britain out of it than in it, as if it needed to be contemplated from a distance, in order thoroughly to appreciate all its claims upon our love and respect. In Canada almost every one is a busy local politician, deeply immersed in party squabbles and manoeuvres, and often separated by them from his neighbour. But let the magic name of * home ' be mentioned, and the remembrance of the once-familiar land causes every other thought to be forgotten. In the time of the Rebellion in 1837, before we came out, it was found that although multitudes had talked wildly enough while things were all quiet, the moment it was proposed to rise against England, the British- born part of them, and many native Canadians as well, at once went over to the old flag, to defend it, if necessary, with their lives. And when it seemed as if England needed help in the time of the war with Russia, Canada came forward in a moment, of her own accord, and raised a regiment to aid in fighting her battles, and serve her in any part of the world. Later still, when the Prince of Wales went over, they gave him such a reception as^ showed their loyalty most nobly. Through the whole province it seemed as if the population were smitten with an universal enthusiasm, and despaired of exhibiting it sufficiently. And but yesterday, when rumours of war rose once ^PSH^fe., The Colotired People. 2>1S more, the whole people where kindled in a moment with a loyal zeal. I was very much struck, on this trip, with the number of coloured people who have found a refuge in Canada. In all the hotels, most of the waiters, and a large proportion of the cooks, seemed to be coloured. They take to these employments naturally, and never appear to feel themselves in. greater glory than when fussing about the table at meals, or wield- mg the basting-ladle in the kitchen. They very seldom turn to trades, and even their children, as they grow up, are not much more inclined to them. I used to think it was, perhaps, because, as slaves, they might not have learned trades, but this would not apply to those born in Canada, who might learn them if they liked. They become, instead, whitewashers, barbers, or waiters, and cooks, like their fathers before them. I was told, however, that they are a well-con- ducted set of people, rarely committing any crimes, and very temperate. They have places of worship of their own, and I was amused by a friend telling us, one night, how he had met their minister going home, carrying a piece of raw beef at his side by a string, and how, when he had one evening gone to their chapel, the official, a coloured man, had told him that ' the folks had tu'ned out raither lean in the mo'nin, and, 'sides, the wood's sho't — so I guess we sha'n't open to-night.' Poor, simple creatures, it is, indeed, a grand i 31^ Hamilton, thing that there is a home open for them like Canada, where they can have the full enjoyment of liberty. Long may the red cross of St George wave an invita- tion to their persecuted race to come and find a refuge under its shadow ! I went home again by way of Hamilton, to which I crossed in a steamer. The white houses, peeping through the woods, were a pretty sight at the places wliere we stopped, the larger ones standing on all sides, detached, in the midst of pleasant grass and trees ; the others, in the villages, built with an easy variety of shape and size that could hardly be seen in an older country. The tin spires of churches rose, every here and there, brightly through the trees, reminding one that the faith of his dear native land had not been forgotten, but was cherished as fondly in the lonely wilderness as it had been at home. Hamilton, the only town of Canada West with a hill near it, gave me a day's pleasure in a visit to a friend, and a ramble over * the mountain,' as they called the ridge behind it. The sight of streets built of stone, instead of wood, or brick, was posi- tively delightf il, bringing one in mind of the stability of an older country. * Have you ever seen any of this?' said my friend, when we were b ck in his room, and he handed me a grain different from any I had ever noticed before. I said I had not. It was rice ; got from Rice Lake when he was down there lately. The lake lies a little north of Cobourg, Lake Rice. 377 which is seventy miles or so below Toronto. He was very much pleased with his trip. The road to it lies, after leaving Cobourg, through a fine farming countr)' for some distance, and then you get on what the folks call * the plains ' — great reaches of sandy soil, covered with low, scrubby oak bushes, thick with filberts. As you get to the lake, the view is really beautiful, while the leaves are out. The road stretches on through avenues of green, and, at last, when you get nearer, there are charming peeps of the water through a fringe of beautiful trees, and over and through a world of creepers, and vines, and bushes of all sorts. The rice grows only in the shallow borders of the lake, rising in beds along the shore, from the deep mud, in which it takes root. It looks curious to see grain in the middle of water. The Indians have it left to them as a perquisite, and they come when it gets ripe, and gather it in their canoes, sailing along and bending down the ears over the edges of their frail vessels, and beating out the rice as they do so. They get a good deal of shooting as well as rice, for the ducks and wild fowl are as fond of the ears as themselves, ixA flock in great numbers to get a share of them. There are great beds along the shores of the Georgian Bay, on Lake Huron, as well as on Rice Lake, but there also it is left to the Indians. Of course I was full of my recent visit to the Falls, and dosed m^ friend with all the details which occur- red to me. He had noticed, like me, how the 31^ The ' Maid of the Mist: windows rattle unceasingly in the neighbourhood, from the concussion of the air, and told me of a cu- rious consequence of the dampness, from the minute powdery spray that floats far in every direction ; — that they could not keep a piano from warping and getting out of tune, even as far as a mile from the Falls, near the river's edge. The glorious sunrise I had seen from Drummondville came back again to my thoughts ; how, on rising- early one morning, the great cloud at the Falls, and the long swathe of vapour that lay over the chasm for miles below, had been changed into gold by the light, and shone like the gates of heaven ; and I remembered how I had been struck with a great purple vine near the river's edge, which, after climbirg a lofty elm that had been struck and withered by lightning, flung its arms, waving far, into the air. * Did you see the Maid of the Mist ? ' he asked. Of course I had, and we talked of it ; how the little steamer plies, many times a day, from the landing-places, close up to the Falls, going sometimes so near that you stand on the bank, far above, in anxious excitement lest it should be sucked into the cauldron and perish at once. I have stood thus wondering if the paddles would ever get her out of the white foam into which she had pressed, and it seemed as if, though they were doing their utmost, it was a terrible time before they gained their point. If any accident were to happen to the machinery, woe to those on board 1 As it is, they get drenched, in spite Homespun Cloth. 379 of oil-skin dresses, and must be heartily glad when they reach firm footing once more. I was sorry when I had to leave and turn my face once more towards home. As the stage drove on, the roads being still in their best condition, 1 had leisure to notice everything. The quantity of homespun gray woollen cloth, worn by the farmers and country people, was very much greater than I had seen it in previous years, and was in admirable keeping with the country around. The wives and [daughters in the farmhouses have a good deal to do in its manufacture. The wool is taken to the mill to get cleaied, a certain weight being kept back from each lot in payment ; then the sno\vy- white fleece is twisted into rolls, and in that condition it is taken bad. by its owners to be spun into yarn at home. I like the hum of the spinning-wheel amazingly, and have often waited to look at some tidy girl, walk- ing backwards and forwards at her task, at each approach sending off another hum, as she drives the wheel round once more. But the cloth is not made at home. The mill gets the yam when finished, and weaves it into the homely useful fabric I saw every where around. At one place we had an awkward stoppage on a piece of narrow corduroy road. There happened to be a turn in it, so that the one end could not be seen from the other, and we had got on some distance, bumping dreadfully from log to log, when a waggon made its appearance coming towards us. It could not pass and it could not turn, and there was water iii !!'; 380 A Grumbling Scotchman, at both sides. What was to be done ? It was a great (luestion for the two drivers. Their tongues went at a great rate at each other for a while, but, after a time, they cooled down enough to discuss the situation, as two statesmen would the threatened collision of empires. They finally solved the difficulty by unyoking the horses from the waggon, and pushing it back over the logs with infinite trouble, after taking out as much of the load as was necessary. Of course the passengers helped with right goodwill, turning the wheels, and straining this way and that, till the road was clear, when we drove on once more. The bridge at Brant- ford, when we reached it, was broken down, having remained so since the last spring floods, when it had been swept away by the ice and water together, and the coach had to get through the stream as well as it could. The horses behaved well, the vehicle itself slipped and bumped over and against the stones at the bottom; but it got a cleaning that it very much needed, and neither it nor we took any harm. A great lumpish farmer, who travelled with me, helped to pass the time by his curious notions and wonderful power of grumbling. A person beside him, who appeared to know his ways, dragged him into conversation, whether he would or not. He maintained there was nothing in Canada like what he had seen in Scotland ; his wheat had been destroyed by the midge, year after year, or by the rust ; his potatoes, he averred, had never done well, and everything else had been alike miserable. Alt Irish Labourer. 381 At last he seemed to have got through his lamentations, and his neighbour struck in — * Well, at any rate, Mr M'Craw, you can't say but your turnips are first-rate this year ; why one of them will fill a bucket when you cut it up for the cattle.' But Mr M'Craw was not to be beaten, and had a ready answer. * They're far owre guid — I'll never be fit to use them — the half o' them 'ill rot in the grund, if they dinna choke the pair kye wi' the size o' them.* The whole of us laughed, but Mr M'Craw only shook his head. As we were trotting along we overtook an Irishman — a labouring man — and were hailed by him as we passed. * Will ye take us to IngersoU for a quarter (an English shilling) ? ' The driver pulled up — made some objections, but at last consented, and Paddy instantly pulled out his money, and reached it into the hand which was stretched down to receive it. 'Jump in, now — quick.' But, indeed, he needn't have said it, he was only too anxious to do so. The coach window was down, and the pane being large, a good-sized opening was left. In a moment Pat was on the step below; the next first one leg came through the window-frame, amidst our unlimited laughter ; then the body tried to follow, but this was no easy business. * Wait a minit. I'll be thro' in a minit,' he shouted to us. * Get out, man, do ye no ken the use o' a door ? ' urged Mr M'Craw. But in the mean time Pat had crushed himself through, in some way, and had landed in an extraordinary fashion, as gently as he could, across our knees. We soon got 382 A Gentleman and his Dog, him into his seat, but it was long before we ceased laughing at the adventure. He could never have been in a coach in his life before. I saw a misfortune happen in an omnibus some years after, on the way- down to Toronto from the North, which was the only thing to be compared to it for its effect on the risible powers of the spectators. A gentleman travelling with me then, had a favourite dog with him, which he was very much afraid he might lose, but which the driver would not allow him to take inside. At every stoppage the first thought of both man and beast seemed the same, to see if all was right with the other. The back of the omnibus was low, and the dog was eager to get in, but he and his master could only con- fer with each other from opposite sides of the door. At last, as we got near the town we came to a halt once more. The gentleman was all anxiety about his dog. For the fiftieth time he put his head to the window to see if everything was right. But it happened that, just as he did so, the dog was in full flight for the same opening, having summoned up all his strength for a terrible jump through the only entrance, and reached it at the same moment as his master's face, against which he came with a force which sent himself back to the ground and sorely dis- turbed his owner's composure. It was lucky the animal was not' very large, else it might have done serious damage ; as it was, an astounding shock was the only apparent result. It was a pity he was hurt '%^ New England Emigrants. 3 83 at all, but the thought of blocking off the clog with his face, as you do a cricket ball with a bat, and tlic sublime astonishment of both dog and man at the colli- sion, were irresistibly ludicrous. On our way from London to Lake Huron we came on a curious sight at the side of the road — a New England family, on their way from Vermont to Miclii- gan, travelling, and living, in a waggon, like the Scy- thians of old. The waggon was of comparatively slight construction, and was arched over with a white canvas roof, so as to serve for a conveyance by day and a bed-room by night, though it must have been hard work to get a man and his wife, and some children, all duly stretched out at full length, packed into it. Some of them, I suppose, took advantage of wayside inns for their nightly lodging. A thin pipe, projecting at the back, showed that they had a small stove with them, to cook their meals. Two cows were slowly walking behind, the man himself driving them ; and a tin pail, hanging on the front of the waggon, spoke of part of their milk being in the process of churning into butter by the shaking on the way. They were vtxy respectable-looking people — as nearly all New Eng- landers are — and had, no doubt, sold off their property, whrtever it might have been, in their native State, to go in search of a new ' location,' as they call it — that is, a fresh settlement in the Far West, with the praises of which, at that time, the country was full. It must have taken them a very long time to get so far at such 384 New England Emigrants, a snail's pace ; but time would eventually take a snail round the world, if it had enough of it, and they seemed to lay no stress whatever on the rate of their progress. They had two horses, two cows, and the waggon, to take with them, until they should reach their new neighbourhood ; and to accomplish that was worth some delay. One of my fellow-travellers told me that such waggon-loads were then an every-day sight on the road past Brantford ; and, indeed, I can easily believe it. Michigan was then a garden of Eden, according to popular report; but it was not long in losing its fame, which passed to AVisconsin, and from that, has passed to other States or territories since. The New England folks are as much given to leaving their own country as any people, and much more than most. Their own States are too poor to keep them well at home; and they have energy, shrewdness, and very often high principle, which make them welcome in any place where they may choose to settle in preference. I know parts in some of the New England States where there are hardly any young men or young women ; they have left for the towns and cities more or less remote, where they can best push their fortunes. It is the same very much in Nova Scotia, and, indeed, must be so with all poor countries. I was very glad, when I got home, to find all my circle quite well, and had a busy time of it for a good while, telling them all I had seen and heard. They A Potato Pit. 385 were busy witli their fall-work — ^getting the potatoes and turnips put into pits, to keep them from the frost when it should set in, and getting ready a great stock of firewood. Our pit was a curious affair, which I should have mentioned earlier, since we made it in the second fall we were on the river. We dug a great hole like a grave, many feet deep, large enough to hold a hundred bushels of potatoes, and I don't know what besides. The bottom of this excavation was then strewed with loose boards, and the sides were walled round with logs, set up side by side, to keep the earth from falling in. On the top, instead of a roof, we laid a floor of similar logs, close together, and on this we heaped up earth to the thickness of about three feet, to keep out the cold, however severe it might be. The entrance was at one end, down a short ladder, which brought you to a door, roughly fitted in. The first year it was made, we paid for imperfect acquaintance with such things by bringing a heavy loss on ourselves. We had put in eighty bushels of potatoes, and, to keep out the least trace of frost, filled up the hole where the ladder was with earth. But in the spring when we opened the pit to get out our seed, we found the whole heap to be worthless. I remember the day very well; it was very bright and beautiful, and we were all in high spirits. The earth was removed from the ladder end in a very short time, and young Grahame, one of a neighbour's boys, asked leave to go in first, and bring 25 Ml 386 The Winters Wood, out the first basketful. Down he leaped, pulled open the door, and crept in. We waited a minute, but there was no sign of his coming out again. We called to him but got no answer; and at last I jumped down to find the poor little fellow overpowered from the effects of the carbonic acid gas, with which the pit was filled. The earth at the ladder end had entirely prevented the necessary ventilation, and the potatoes had ' heated,' \2xA had become perfectly rotten. We managed better after this by putting straw instead of earth into the opening; but the right plan would have been to sink "a small hollow tube of wood — a slender piece of some young tree, with the middle scooped out, through the top, to serve as a ventilator. It was a great loss to us, as the potatoes were then at the unusual price of a dollar a bushel, and eighty dollars were to us, at that time, a small fortune. The laying in the winter's wood was a tedious affair; it was cut in the fall, and part of it dragged by the oxen to the house in the shape of long logs ; but we left the greater part of the drawing till the snow came. It was a nasty job to cut off each day what would serve the kitchen, and keep the fires brisk; and I sometimes even yet feel a twinge of conscience at the way I used to dole out a fixed num- ber of pieces to my sisters, keeping it as small as possible, and much smaller than it should have been. I was willing enough to work at most things, and Chopping Firewood. 3^7 can't blame myself for being lazy; but to get up from the warm fire on a cold morning to chop firewood, was freezing work ; though this should certainly not have kept me from cutting a few more sticks, after all. I am afraid we are too apt to be selfish in these trifles, even when we are the very reverse in things of more moment. If I had the chance, now 1 am older, I think I would atone for my stinginess, cost me what freezing it might. ■■V»"»i"""""'".'" 388 en CHAPTER XXV. Thoughts for the future— Changes— Too-hard study— Education in Canada — Christmas markets — Winter amusements — Ice- boats— Very cold ice — Oil-springs— Changes on the farm — Growth of Canada— The American climate — Old England again. |HEN we had been five years on the farm, and Henry, and I, and the girls, were now- getting to be men and women, the ques- tion of what we should do to get started in the world, became more and more pressing. Robert wished to get married ; Henry and I, and the two girls, all alike, wanted to be off; and the farm was clearly unfit to support more than one household. It took a long time for us to come to any conclusion, but at last we decided that Robert should have the land, that the girls should be sent for a time to a school rlown the country, and Henry and I should go to To- ronto, he to study medicme, and I law. Of course, all this could not be managed at once, but it was greatly facilitated by remittances from my brothers in England, who undertook by far the larger proportion of the cost. I confess I felt more sorrow at leaving the old place than I had expected, though it was still Too-hard Study. 389 for years to be my home whenever I got free for a time; and it was long before I could get fairly into Blackstone, and Chitty, and Smith. Had I knovn how my life would ultimately turn, I don't think I should ever have troubled them, for here I am now, my law laid aside, snugly in England again, a partner in the mercantile establishment of my brothers, who had continued at home. I did not like the law in its every-day details of business, though- all must recog- nize the majesty of the great principles on which the whole fabric rests ; and I got tired utterly of tlie country, at last, perhaps from failing health, for I bent with too much zeal to my studies when I once began. The chance of leaving Canada for my native land was thus unspeakably pleasing; and it has rewarded the gratitude with which I once more reached it, by giving me back a good part of the strength I had lost. When I look back on the years I spent over my books, and remember how I presumed on my youth, and tasked myself, night and day, to continuous work, it seems as if my folly had only been matched by my guilt. To undermine our health is to trifle with all our advantages at once. Honest, earnest work, is all well enough, and nobody can ever be anything without it, but if there be too much of it, it defeats its own object, and leaves him who has overtaxed himself behind those who have made a more discreet use of their strength. I would gladly give half of what I learned by all my years of close study, for some of the 390 Too-hard Study. health I lost in acquiring it. Indeed, I question if I gained more, after all, by fagging on with a wearied body and mind, than I would, if I had taken proper relaxation and amusement, and returned fresh and vigor- rous to my books. The Genoese archers lost the battle of Cressy by a shower falling on their bow- strings, while those on our side gained it by having had their weapons safely in cases till the clouds were past. So, no doubt, it should be in our management of those powers within, on which our success in stu- dent life depends — let them be safely shielded betimes, and they will be fresh for action when others are re- laxed and useless. How much time is spent when the mind is wearied, without our being able to retain any- thing of what we read ! How often have I closed my book, at last, with the feeling, that, really, it might as well have been shut long before. I read in the office, and out of it, whenever I had a chance ; had some book or other on the table at my meals ; kept rigidly from visiting friends, that I might economize every moment ; poked my fire, and lighted a fresh candle at midnight, and gained some knowledge, indeed, but at the cost of white, or rather yellow cheeks — a stoop of the shoulders, and a hollow chest — cold feet, I fear, for life, and a stomach so weak that I am seldom without a memento of my folly in the pain it gives me. An hour or two in the open air every day would have saved me all these abatements, and would have Education in Canada. 39 A quickened my powers of work so as more than to make up for their being indulged in a little play. Since my day, great facilities have been afforded in Canada for education. There are now grammar- schools, with very moderate fees, in every part of the country, and a lad or young man can very easily get a scholarship which takes him free through the Uni- versity at Toronto.* Every county has one or more to give away each year. There is thus every chance for those who wish to rise, and Canada will no doubt show some notable results from the facility she has liberally provided for the encouragement of native genius and talent. My being for a length of time in a town showed me new features of our colonial life which I should in vain have looked for in the country. In many respects I might easily have forgotten I was in Canada at all, for you might as well speak of getting a correct idea of England from living in a provincial town, as of Canada by living in the streets of Toronto. The dress of the people is much the same as in Britain. Hats and light overcoats are not entirely laid aside even in winter, though fur caps and gauntlets, after all, are much more common. The ladies sweep along * T hp University has been long established, but since I at- tended its classes, it has been put on a more liberal basis — the number of chairs enlarged, and facilities for obtaining its ad- vantages greatly increased. 39- Christmas Markets. with more show than in England, as if they dressed for out-of-door display especially; but they are, no doubt, tempted to this by the clearness and dryness of the air, which neither soils nor injures fine things, as the coal-dust and the dampness do in English towns. The most plainly-dressed ladies I used to sec were the wife and daughters of the Governor-general. The markets at Christmas were usually a gre'^^er attraction to many people than they used to be in England. If the weather chanced to be cold, you would see huge files of frozen pigs standing on their four legs in front of the stalls, as if they had been killed when at a gallop ; countless sheep hung over- head, with here and there one of their heads carefully gilded, to add splendour to the exhibition. Some deer were almost always to be noticed at some of the stalls, and it was not unusual to see the carcase of a bear contributing its part to the general show. As to the oxen, they were too fat for my taste, though the butchers seem to be proud of them in proportion to their obesity. The market was not confined to a special building, though there was' one for the purpose. Long ranges of farmers' waggons, ranged at each side of it, showed similar treasures of frozen pork and mutton, the animals standing entire at the feet of their owners, who sat among them waiting for purchasers. Fiozen geese, ducks, chickens, and turkeys abounded, and that household was very poor indeed which had not one or other to grace the festival. / ;k I Winter Ainnscmcnts. 393 Winter was a great time for amusement to the townspeople, from the nearness of the broad bay which in summer forms their harbour, and, after the frost, their place of recreation. It was generally turned into a great sheet of ice across its whole breadth of two miles, some time about Christmas, and continued like rock till the middle of April. As long as there were no heavy falls of snow to bury it, or after they hatl been blown off by the wind, the skating was universal. Boys and men alike gave way to the passion for it. The ice was covered with one restless throng from morning to night. School-boys made for it as soon as they got free ; the clerks and shopmen were down the instant the shutters were up and the doors fastened ; even ladies crowded to it, either to skate with the assistance of some gentlemen, or to see the crowd, or to be pushed along in chairs mounted on runners. The games of different kinds played between large numbers were very exciting. Scotchmen with their * curhng,' others with balls, battering them hither and thither, in desperate efforts to carry them to a par- ticular boundary. Then there were the ice-boats gliding along in every direction, with their loads of well-dressed people reclining on them, and their huge sail swelling overhead. These contrivances were new to me, though I had been so long in Canada. They consist of a three-cornered frame of wood, large enough to give room for five or six people lying down or sitting en them, the upper side boarded over, and , 1 394 T/ic Ice- trade of Toronto, the lower shod on each angle with an iron runner. A mast and sail near the sharp point which goes fore- most furnish the means of propulsion. The two longest runners are fixed, but the short one at the back is worked by a helm, the steersman having ab- solute control of the machine by its aid, and keeping within reach the cleats of the sail, that he may loosen or tighten it as he sees necessary. Many of the lads about were very skilful in managing them, and would sail as close to the wind, and veer and tack, as if they were in an ordinary boat in the water, instead of an oddly-shaped sleigh on ice. A very little wind suf- ficed to drive them at a good speed if the ice was good, and there was a good deal of excitement in watching the cracks and airholes as you rushed over them. I have seen them sometimes going with great rapidity. They say, indeed, that occasionally they cross the harbour in less than four minutes — a rate of speed equal to nearly thirty miles an hour. The ice-trade of Toronto is a considerable branch of industry during the winter, and gangs of men are employed for weeks together sawing out great blocks about two feet square from the parts of the bay where it is clearest and best for use. These are lifted by poles furnished with iron hooks, into carts, and taken to houses specially prepared for keeping them through the hot weather of the following summer. An ord4- nary wooden frame building is lined inside with a wall all round, at from two to three feet from the outer spring Ice, 393 one, and the space between is filled with waste tan bark rammed close, to keep out the heat when it comes. In this wintry shelter the cubes of ice arc built up in solid masses, and, when full, the whole is finally protected by double doors, with a large quan- tity of straw between them. In the hot months yoa may see light carts with cotton coverings stretched over them in every street, carrying round the con- tents— now broken into more saleable pieces— the words 'Spring Ice' on each side of the white roof inviting the housekeepers to supply themselves. In hotels, private dwellings, railway carriages, steamers, and indeed everywhere, drinking-water in summer is invariably cooled by lumps of this gelid luxury, and not a few who take some of the one finish by suck- ing and swallowing some of the other. I saw an advertisement lately in a New Orleans paper begging the visitors at hotels not to eat the ice in the water- jugs this season, as, from the war having cut off the supply from the North, it was very scarce. At table, in most houses, the butter is regularly surmounted by a piece of ice, and it seems a regular practice with some persons at hotels and on steamers to show their breeding and selfishness by knocking aside this useful ornament, and taking the piece which it covered, as the coolest and hardest, leaving the others to put it up again if they like. Boiling water never gets hotter than two hundred and twelve degrees, because at that heat it flies off in 39^ Canadian Tec. steam, but ice may be made a great deal colder than it is when it first freezes. English ice is pretty cold, but it never gets far below thirty-two degrees, which is the freezing-point. Canadian ice, on the other hand, is as much colder as the air of Canada, in whicli it is formed, is than that of England. Thus there is much more cold in a piece of ice, of a given size, from the one country, than in a piece of similar size from the other, and where cold is wished to be pro- duced, as it is in all drinks in summer in hot climates, Canadian ice is, of course, much more valuable than any warmer kind would be. The Americans have long ago thought of this, and have created a great trade in their ice, which is about as cold as that of Canada, taking it in ships prepared very much as the ice-houses are, to India, and many other countries, where it is sold often at a great profit. You read of the ice crop as you would hear farmers speak of their crop of wheat or potatoes. They have not got so far as this that I know of in Canada, but if Boston ice can command a good price in Calcutta or Madras, that of the Lower St Lawrence should be able to drive it out of the market, for it is very much colder. A few inches of it are like a concentrated portable winter. In the fine farms round Toronto a great many fields are without any stumps, sometimes from their having been cleared so long that the stumps have rotted out, and sometimes by their having been pulled Oil Springs, 397 out bodily as you would an old tooth, by a stump machine. It is a simple enough contrivance. A great screw is raised over the stump on a strong frame of wood which is made to enclose it; some iron grapnels are fastened into it on different sides, and a long pole put sticking out at one side for a horse, and then — after some twists — away it goes, with far more ease than would be thought possible. The outlying roots have, of course, to be cut away first, 'and a good deal of digging done, to let the screw and the horse, or horses, have every chance, but it is a much more expeditious plan than any other known in Canada, and must be a great comfort to the farmer by letting him plough and harrow without going round a wilder- ness of stumps in .each field. A singular discovery has been made of late years about ten miles behind Robert's farm in Bidport, of wells yielding a constant supply of petroleum, or rock oil, instead of water. The quantity obtained is enormous, and as the oil is of a very fine quality and fit for most ordinary purposes, it is of great value. Strangely enough, not only in Canada, but also in the States, the same unlooked-for source has been found, at about the same time, supplying the same kind of oil. The * wells * of Pennsylvania are amazingly productive. I have been assured that there is a small river in one of the townships of that State, called Oil Creek, which is constantly covered with a thick coat of oil, from the quantity that oozes from each side of the banks. The 398 Oil Springs. whole soil around is saturated with it, and this, with the necessity of fording the water, has destroyed a great many valuable horses, which are found to get inflamed and useless in the legs by the irritation the oil causes. Wells are sunk in every part of the neighbourhood, each of wliich spouts up oil as an artesian well does water, and that to such an amazing extent that, from some of them, hundreds of barrels, it is affirmed, ha/e been filled in a day. Indeed, there is one well, which is known by the name of * The Brawley,' which, if we can believe the accounts given, in sixty days spouted out thirty-three thousand barrels of oil, and some others are alleged to have yielded more than two thousand barrels in twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, preparations had not, in most cases, been made for catching this extraordinary' quantity, so that a great proportion of it ran off and was lost. The depth of the wells varies. Some are close to the surface, but those which yield most are from five to eight hundred feet deep, and, there, seem to reach a vast lake of oil which is to all appearance inexhaustible. They manage to save the whole produce now by lining the wells, which are mere holes about six inches in diameter, for some depth with copper sheathing, and putting a small pipe with stop-cocks in at the top, which enables them to control the flow as easily as they do that of water. If we think of the vast quan- tities of coal stored up in different parts, it will dimin- Oil Springs, 399 ish our astonishment at the discovery of these huge reservoirs of oil, for both seem to have the same source, from the vast beds of vegetation of the early eras of the globe ; if, indeed, the oil do not often rise from decomposition of coal itself, for it occurs chiefly in the coal measures. We shall no doubt have full scientific accounts of them, after a time, and as they become familiar we will lose the feeling of wonder which they raised at first. Except to the few who are thoughtful, nothing that is not new and strange seems worthy of notice ; but, if we consider aright, what is wonderful in itself is no less so because we have be- come accustomed to it. It is one great difference be- tween a rude and a cultivated mind, that the one has only a gaping wonder at passing events or discoveries, while the other seeks to find novelty in what is already familiar. The one looks only at a result before him, the other tries to find out causes. The one only looks at things as a whole, the other dwells on details and examines the minutest parts. The one finds food for his curiosity in his first impressions, and when these fade, turns aside without any further interest; the other discovers wonders in things the most com- mon, insignificant, or apparendy worthless. Science got the beautiful metal — aluminium— out of the clay which ignorance trod under foot; through Sir Hum phrey Davy it got iodine out of the scrapings of soap-kettles which the soap-boilers had always thrown I 400 Changes on the Farm. out, and it extracts the beautiful dyes we call Magenta and Solferino, from coal-tar which used to be a worth- less nuisance near every gas-house. My brother Robert's farm, when I last saw it, was very different from my first recollections of it. He has had a nice little brick house built, and frame barns have taken the place of the old log ones that served us long ago. After our leaving he commenced a new orchard of the best trees he could get — a nursery- established sixty miles off down the river supplying the young trees of the best kinds cheaply. They have flourished, and must by this time be getting quite broad and venerable. He has some good horses, a nice gig for summer, with a leather cover to keep off the sun or the storm, and a sleigh for winter, with a very handsome set of furs. Most of the land is cleared, and he is able to keep a man all the time, so that he has not the hard work he once had. His fences are new and good, and the whole place looked very pleasant in summer. All this progress, however, has not been made from the profits of the farm. A little money left by a relative to each of us gave him some capital, and with it he opened a small store on his lot in a little house built for the purpose. There was no pretence of keeping shop, but when a customer came he called at the house, and any one who happened to be at hand went with him and unlocked the door, opened the shutter and supplied him, locking all / Grozuth of Canada, 401 safely again when he was gone. In this primitive way he has made enough to keep him very comfortably with his family, the land providing most of what they eat. They have a school within a mile of them, but It is rather a humble one, and there is a clergyman for the church at the wharf two miles down. Henry established himself in a little village when he first got his degree, but was thought so much of' by his profess- ors that he has been asked to take the chair of sur- gery, which he now holds. My two sisters, Margaret and Eliza, both married, but only the former is now living, the other having been dead for some years. Margaret is married to a worthy Presbyterian minister, and, if not rich, is, at least, comfortable, in the plain way familiar in Canada. When we first went to Canada no more was meant by that name than the strip of country along the St Lawrence, in the Lower Province, and, in the Upper, the peninsula which is bounded by the great lakes- Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Since then, however, the discovery of gold in California and Eraser's River has given a wider range to men's thoughts, and awakened an ambition in the settled districts to claim as their domain the vast regions of British America, stretching away west to the shores of the Pacific, and north to the Arctic Ocean. I used to think all this vist tract only fit for the wild animals to which it was for the most part left, but there is nothing like a little know- 26 J .H«1^JIJ« .■ '»"••' •TH«»'. 'I'W^ ! 402 7/^^ American Climate, ledge for changing mere prejudice. There is of course a part of it which is irredeemably desolate, but there are immense reaches which will, certainly, some day, be more highly valued than they are now. The nearly untouched line on the north of Lake Huron has been found to be rich in mines of copper. The Red River district produces magnificent wheat. The River Saskatchewan, flowing in two great branches ti:)m ,:* west and north-west to Lake Winnepeg, drains a country more than six times as large as the whole of England and Wales, and everywhere showing the most glorious woods and prairies, which are proofs of its wealth as an agricultural region. The Mackenzie River drains another part of the territory eight times as large as England and Wales together, and the lower parts of it, at least, have a climate which pro- mises comfort and plenty. It is no less than two thousand five hundred miles in length, and is navigable by steamboats for twelve hundred miles from its mouth. It is a singular fact that the farther west you go on the North American continent, the milder the climate. Vancouver's Island, which is more than two hundred miles farther north than Toronto, has a climate like that of England ; instead of the extremes of Canada, ai^: you go up the map, the difference between the west and east sides of the continent becomes as great as if we were to find in Newcastle the same temperature in winter as French settlers enjoy in Algiers, 'i he musk The American ClifJiate. 403 oxen go more than four hundred miles farther north in summer, on the western, than they do on the eastern side, and the elk and moose-deer wander nearly six hundred miles farther north in the grass season, on the one than on the other. It is indeed more wonderful that the east side of America should be so cold than that the west should be so much milder. Toronto is on a line with the Py- renees]^and Florence, and yet has the climate of Russia instead of that of Southern France or Italy; and Quebec, with its frightful winters and roasting sum- mers, would stand nearly in the middle of France, if it were carried over in a straight line to Europe. Yet we know what a wonderful diflference there is in England, which is, thus, far to the north of it. It is to the different distribution of land and sea in the two hemispheres, the mildness in the one case, and the coldness in the other, must be attributed. The sea which stretches round the British Islands, warmed by the influence of the Gulf Stream, is the great source of their comparative warmth, tempering, by its nearly uniform heat, alike the fierce blasts of the north and the scorching airs of the south. In Sir Charles Lyell's ' Principles of Geology,' you will find maps of the land and sea on the earth, so arranged that, in one, all the land would be comparatively temperate, while, in tlie other, it would all^be comparatively cold. In America it is likely that the great mountains that run north and 404 Old England again. II south in three vast chains, beginning, in the west, with the Cascade Mountains, followed, at wide dis- tances, by the Rocky Mountains, rising in their vast height and length, as a second barrier, on the east of them, and by the vast nameless chain which stretches, on the east side of the continent, from the north shore of Lake Superior to the south of King William's I li^ on the Arctic Ocean — modify the climate of the . t North-west to some extent, but it is very hard to speak with any confidence on a point so little known. I have already said that I am glad I am back again in dear Old England, and I repeat it now that I am near the end of my story. I have not said anything about my stay in Nova Scotia, because it did not come within my plan to do so. but I include it in my thoughts when I say, that, alter all I have seen these long years, I believe 'there's no place like home.' If a boy really wish to get on and work as he ought, he will find an opening in life in his own glorious countr}', without leaving it for another. Were the same amount of labour expended by any one here, as I have seen men bestow on their wild farms in the bush, they would get as much for it in solid comfort and enjoy- ment, and would have around them through life the thousand delights of their native land. Some people can leaveUhe scene of their boyhood and the friends of their youth, and even of their manhood, without I I ! Feelings towards England. 405 seeming to feel it, but I do not envy them their in- difference. I take no shame in confessing that I felt towards England, while away from it, what dear Oliver Goldsmith says so touchingly of his brother :- 'Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee : btill to my country turns, with ceaseless pain. And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. THE END. "^'"^^^'^-'^ * Co., Prtnters. " Il,e Armo^;;7i^thwark.